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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.  

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. Frederick Leyland's collection consisted of Qing-dynasty pieces, primarily from the Kangxi period (1662-1722), in a range of shapes and sizes, as suggested by the variety of spaces formed by Jeckyll's elaborate walnut framework. Cobalt-blue peacock feathers -- which were almost invisible before conservation -- appear on the walls behind the shelves, echoing the blue patterns on the bright white pots; the gilded spindles of the shelves frame each piece as a separate work of art. As a result, Whistler's Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room is once again what the artist intended, a whimsical land of porcelain ruled by the princess in the painting.

Suggested Reading
Curry, David Park. James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art. New York: W. W. Norton and Freer Gallery of Art, 1984. See especially "Artist and Architect."

Lawton, Thomas, and Linda Merrill. Freer: A Legacy of Art. Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1993. See especially chapter 7, "Composing the Collection."

Merrill, Linda. The Peacock Room: A Cultural Biography. Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art in association with Yale University Press, 1998.

Merrill, Linda, and Sarah Ridley. The Princess and the Peacocks; or, The Story of the Room. New York: Hyperion Books for Children in association with the Freer Gallery of Art, 1993.

Conservation of the Peacock Room was made possible by a major grant from the Getty Grant Program and additional support from the James Smithson Society and the Mars Foundation.  Research on the Peacock Room was supported by a generous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.

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The Princess
The Princess