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The Whistler Peacock Room

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The Whistler Peacock Room he Freer Gallery of Art SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION THE WHISTLER PEACOCK ROOM Publication 4024 (Rev.) WASHINGTON D. C. 1962 O ^ :3 '1 -o THE WHISTLER PEACOCK ROOM FREER GALLERY OF ART.— PEACOCK ROOM FRONTISPIECE 06.57. James McNeill Whistler: Portrait of Himself Oil painting, done in Paris, ca. 1858. The Freer Gallery of Art of the SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION THE WHISTLER PEACOCK ROOM WASHINGTON D. C. 1962 Freer Sal lory of Art Washington, D. G. PORT CITY PRESS, INC BALTIMORE, MD., U. S. FOREWORD The following account concerns two objects in the col- lections of the Freer Gallery of Art. These are treated in two sections, the first of which is properly called Har- mony in Blue and Gold : The Peacock Room, with the catalogue number 04.61. The second, number 03.91, is a portrait known as Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain, which hangs in the Peacock Room and around which the room decorations were designed. Each section is followed by a bibliography relating to it. V CONTENTS Page The Peacock Room I Description I Exhibitions 16 Bibliography 16 The Princess from the Land of Porcelain 19 Description 19 Exhibitions 20 Bibliography 21 vii ) r; HARMONY IN BLUE AND GOLD: THE PEACOCK ROOM Painted during 1 876-1 877 by James A. McNeill Whistler ( 1 834.-1903 * * * * DESCRIPTION The Peacock Room was decorated by James A. McNeill Whistle and is now installed as a part of the permanent collections of the Freer Gallery of Art and designated as Gallery XII. It is an oblong room with a high ceiling. At one end is a fireplace and mantel over which hangs Whistler's painting "La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine," or "The Princess from the Land of Porcelain" ; at the opposite end is a built-in sideboard, above which is a panel depicting two peacocks. Along one side are three large shuttered windows and on the opposite side two doors. A paneled wainscot extends around the walls, above which is a series of brackets and shelves erected against the painted canvas and leather wall covering. The ceiling is paneled in geometric designs with eight pendent lighting fixtures. Whistler's signature, the "Butterfly," may be seen at the top of the right shutter of the central window, in the southwest corner of the ceil- ing, on the upper left panel of the top of the sideboard, and again at the left end of the long panel over the sideboard. The room is done in oil color and gold on wood, leather, and canvas size, 4.258 x 10.109 x 6.083 meters (approximately 14 x 33 x 20 feet). The Peacock Room was originally designed for use as a dining room and for the display of a collection of blue-and-white porcelain in the house known as The Mansion, located at No. 49, Prince's Gate, London. This was the residence of Frederick R. Leyland, a Liverpool shipowner and onetime president of the National Telephone Company of England. Mr. Leyland had moved to London, bought the house, and engaged the well-known architect Norman Shaw to remodel and redecorate it. It was said that it was Mr. Leyland's ambition to live the life of a retired Venetian merchant prince in modern London, and he spared no expense or trouble to make the house fit his dreams. He had bought and had installed in the house the famous Percy staircase, which once adorned Northumberland House before that famous landmark was torn r 2 The Freer Gallery of Art down to make room for an avenue of the same name. The staircase was of stone, with a gilded-bronze balustrade and a paneled dado running from the lower hall to the upper landing. The lower landing was just to the left of the present main door to the Peacock Room. Whistler had been called in to enrich the panels of the staircase, which he did by im- itating aventurine lacquer decorated with small floral patterns in pale pink and white, somewhat in the Japanese taste and style. The panels from this dado also form a part of the permanent collections of the Freer Gallery of Art. Among the many paintings that Mr. Leyland had acquired was Whistler's "Princess from the Land of Porcelain," which was to hang in his dining room and, according to Leyland's plans, was to form the central theme in a scheme of Oriental splendor. It was to be surrounded by a fine collection of blue-and-white porcelain, and thus "The Princess" was to become truly what her title implied. Murray Marks, a friend of both Leyland and Shaw, played a major role in the decorating of the house, acting as adviser to both men, and it is said that it was Marks who selected most of the blue-and-white porcelain that was to go into the dining room. Shaw had as an assistant a young architect named Henry Jeckyll who, it seems, was mainly responsible for the introduction into England of Japanese methods of decoration in domestic architecture after the Paris Exposition of 1867. Notable among the examples of his work were the billiard room and a fireplace and mantel in the house of Alexander Ionides in Kensington. To Jeckyll was entrusted the task of remodeling and decorating the dining room, and he built into the existing architectural features of the room a complete though flimsily constructed wooden shell. It was this important fact, perhaps an unintentional one on JeckylFs part, that has made it possible to dismantle and re-erect this famous room four times during its existence, although not without some damage to the decorations, in 1904, 1905, again in 1920, and most re- cently beginning in 1947. Jeckyll erected walls, a paneled ceiling with eight pendent lamp fix- tures, and full-length shutters over the three windows, and built a tur- quoise-blue fireplace at one end of the room, over the mantel of which he fitted a niche for "The Princess." Seeking a suitable wall covering, he had obtained, at a cost of about £1,000, a quantity of fine old Spanish leather, which had been brought to England by Catherine of Aragon and had hung for 300 years or more in a Tudor house in Norfolk. Its whole surface was embossed with a cross-hatch and twisted-ribbon de- sign and covered with German gilding — that is, silver leaf coated with amber shellac and thus made to resemble gold leaf. On the gilding was FREER GALLERY OF ART.— PEACOCK ROOM PLATE 1 : 4 The Freer Gallery of Art displayed Catherine's device, the open pomegranate, and a series of small, richly colored flowers. The walls and most of the ceiling were constructed of second-grade random widths of pine planks averaging about 6 inches wide by five- eighths of an inch thick. These planks were grooved along the lateral edges and keyed together by loose-fitting splines. Canvas was applied to the planking on the walls, and this in turn was partly covered by leather, i.e., from the top of the second row of shelves to the ceiling. Apparently Jeckyll did not have enough Spanish leather to cover it all. The ceiling was constructed for the most part in the same manner as the walls, except that the geometrical patterns of the panels were designed to ter- minate in the eight pendent gaslight fixtures by an ingenious use of the molding. These pendent lamps were not confined to the dining room but were used generally throughout the main floor of the house. Canvas was glued to the ceiling also and the molding nailed over it. Its purpose, perhaps, was to enable the designer to cover up the cracks between the long pieces of grooved pine to form a flat surface, and this canvas was undoubtedly toned to match the walnut wood used in the lower parts of the room. It seems strange that, in view of the age and value of the leather covering, a more solid foundation, less subject to movement caused by atmospheric changes, was not provided, for over the years there was a constant and damaging movement of the foundation. Against the canvas and leather on the walls Jeckyll erected around the room a series of walnut shelves, carved and gilded in the Japanese manner, for the display of the blue-and-white ware. The woodwork of the doors, shutters, and wainscot was of walnut too, which he covered here and there with a touch of gold, but, for the most part, it was var- nished in a natural wood finish. A rug with a red border was placed on the floor, the dining table with its ornaments and chairs was put in place, "The Princess" hoisted to her position in the niche asssigned her, the blue-and-white porcelain carefully placed on the shelves prepared to receive it, and the dining room was complete. It was said that another of Whistler's paintings, "The Three Figures Pink and Grey," was to adorn the wall opposite "The Princess," but this part of the original plan was never carried out. Just when Whistler had his first access to the finished room is un- known, but the date of his work is a matter of record : it was accom- plished during a period of 6 months during the latter part of 1876 and the early part of 1877; and it must have been about that time that he was invited to view the finished room. It is said that he was pleased with the place of honor accorded "The Princess" but objected to the FREER GALLERY OF ART.— PEACOCK ROOM PLATE 2 03.91.
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