A Face Illumined
1878
An artist sees a woman at a concert. She's stunning. She's empty. He becomes obsessed with the possibility that he can change her. Harold Van Berg paints in his studio when his friend Ik Stanton interrupts with easy banter. That evening at a concert, Van Berg notices Ida Mayhew at a neighboring table. Her beauty stops him cold. But one conversation reveals the hollowness beneath the pretty face. She's frivolous, superficial, all appearance and no substance. Yet Van Berg, the artist, cannot abandon her. If he can paint light into shadows, can he illuminate her character too? Can beauty be made meaningful? This is Victorian moral fiction at its most psychologically acute: a story about whether people can be improved, whether love is a mirror or a hammer, and whether the gaze that sees truly can transform what it sees.
