The Awakening Conscience

In 1853 this would have been read almost like a coded message. A woman rises out of a man's lap, mid-song at the piano, staring past him toward a window we cannot see. To a Victorian eye the clues added up quickly. The room is too new and too glossy, a bachelor's furnished set, and she wears rings on every finger except the one that matters. Hunt loaded the corners with it: a cat under the table with a bird in its claws, a tapestry left unfinished, sheet music for a song about lost innocence. He wanted a viewer to work out, detail by detail, that she is a kept mistress and that something in the music has just woken her. The mirror behind them shows the one thing offering a way out, a patch of sunlit garden beyond the glass.