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The Peacock Room
go back one page The Peacock Room was once the dining room in the London home of Frederick R. Leyland In his patron's absence, Whistler was inspired to make bolder revisions. Yet Whistler entertained visitors and amused the press in the lavishly decorated room, never thinking to ask permission of the owner of the house. Perhaps in retaliation, Whistler took the liberty of coating Leyland's valuable leather with Prussian-blue paint and depicting a pair of peacocks aggressively confronting each other on the wall opposite The Princess. Despite the controversy surrounding its creation, Leyland kept his dining room as Whistler had left it and continued filling the shelves with porcelain until his death in 1892. After Freer's death in 1919, the Peacock Room was transported to Washington, D.C. and installed in the new Freer Gallery of Art. As a further step toward restoring harmony to the Peacock Room, the Freer Gallery has collected examples of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain similar to those for which the room was designed. Go to the next page

Despite the controversy surrounding its creation, Leyland kept his dining room as Whistler had left it and continued filling the shelves with porcelain until his death in 1892. Twelve years later the Peacock Room was removed from the Leyland house and exhibited in a London art gallery. Having recently acquired The Princess from the Land of Porcelain, Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919), who later founded the Freer Gallery of Art, purchased the Peacock Room in 1904. The room was again taken apart, and reinstalled in an addition to Freer's house in Detroit, where it was used for the display of his own collection of ceramics. Freer recognized the importance of the Peacock Room in understanding Whistler's style, and he also believed it to exemplify the spirit of universal beauty that informed his philosophy of collecting and united his holdings of Asian and American art.

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Whistler's Peacock Room, Chicago Sunday Tribune, 4 September 1904
Chicago Tribune