Themes
The Greek ideal made living
Wilde reads Mrs. Langtry's face as a Greek statue. Its lines are 'so definite and so strong, and yet so exquisitely harmonised', and its beauty rests on 'absolutely mathematical laws', like music and architecture. But where art is 'dumb and immobile', the face moves: 'the statue wakes into life', with 'the value of art' added to life. The ideal he admires is 'that mingling of classic grace with absolute reality.'
Beauty that shapes art
Wilde claims a single living face has changed a nation's painting. He sketches a short history: the romantic type of Reynolds and Gainsborough, its fall into 'mere facile prettiness', the Pre-Raphaelite blend of Greek form and Florentine mysticism, and then the 'pure Hellenic joy and serenity' of Albert Moore, Leighton and Whistler, where 'we can trace the influence of this single face.' He hopes it may influence American art in the same way.
Scenery that suggests
The review turns into a small manifesto on stage design. A scene is 'a decorative background for the actors' and must follow 'the fundamental principle of decorative art, which is not to imitate but to suggest nature.' Wilde's examples are the painted hangings of the Elizabethan stage and the choice between Titian, who subordinates landscape to figures, and Claude, who does the reverse. The failed drawing-room, with its ebony doors and mauve table-cover, shows what happens when decoration has no plan.