Summary
Wilde begins with the face that 'laughed through the leaves last night' as Hester Grazebrook. Its ideal is found only in the best Greek gems, the coins of Syracuse and the Parthenon frieze: low forehead, arched brow, a mouth like the mouthpiece of an instrument, a pillared throat, all built on 'absolutely mathematical laws.' Unlike still art, the face moves, the eyes changing colour with each fancy, and her acting mingles classic grace with absolute reality, the secret of all beautiful art from the Greeks to Millet.
Women's beauty, Wilde says, still rules the empire of art. This one face has filled modern English art with its type. The romantic type of Reynolds and Gainsborough decayed into prettiness; the Pre-Raphaelites answered it with Greek form and Florentine mysticism; and when that mysticism grew a burden, the desire for Hellenic serenity took its place in the work of Albert Moore, Leighton and Whistler.
Of the dresses, the last, in silver-grey and pink, is one Whistler would call a Scherzo, or would simply paint. The scenery, prepared in six days, is uneven: a good forge scene with badly grouped roses, a clever German spa, and a drawing-room that fails, down to the mauve table-cover. Scenery should be a decorative background that suggests nature, since realistic acting cannot sit with realistic scene-painting. America, Wilde predicts, will appreciate this beauty, and to the Philistine who objects that perfection is impossible he replies that only impossible things are worth doing.