Unlike most of both Ashbery’s poems and the poems of his contemporaries, “The Painter” adheres to a strict traditional form. While the poem does not keep any regular metrical pattern, it is an almost typical example of a sestina. Sestinas are an old form, generally considered to have originated in 12th-century France. They are composed of six six-line stanzas (or sestets) concluded with one three-line stanza (or tercet) called the envoi. Each of the sestets concludes on one of six distinct words, which are the only six words used to conclude lines in the entirety of the poem.

On a first glance, the six end-words might seem shuffled at random from sestet to sestet. However, the sestina follows a distinct pattern of folding order—one that Ashbery’s poem (almost) exactly follows. If we label each end-word with a number based on its first appearance, “buildings” is 1, “portrait” 2, “prayer” 3, “subject” 4, “brush” 5, and “canvas” 6 (Lines 1-6). This leads to a pattern of six sestets that adhere to the following order of end-words: 1 2 3 4 5 6, 6 1 5 2 4 3, 3 6 4 1 2 5, 5 3 2 6 1 4, 4 5 1 3 6 2, and 2 4 6 5 3 1.