James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room

0:00:06.6 Dr. Beth Harris: We’re in the magical space of the Peacock Room here at the National Museum of Asian Art, a space designed pretty much entirely by James McNeill Whistler. And it’s made a trip from London, where this room first existed, to Detroit, and now here in Washington, D.C.

0:00:28.5 Dr. Diana Greenwold: That’s right. This room has had quite a history. It begins its life as a dining room, 49 Prince’s Gate, the home of Frederick Leyland, who is a shipping magnate. And then it makes its way to Detroit, bought by Charles Lang Freer.

0:00:40.3 Dr. Beth Harris: I feel this obligation to thank Freer for preserving this space. So many artist-designed interior spaces don’t survive, but we’re so lucky that this does and that this museum has taken such amazing care of it.

0:00:56.3 Dr. Diana Greenwold: We are extremely lucky, particularly because Freer admits to this room, in fact, being not entirely to his taste, and it takes some cajoling for him to take the room in its entirety. But because Freer has such a close relationship with Whistler, I happen to think that Freer is very much thinking about Whistler’s legacy in the United States, and in fact really understanding himself as the primary person who’s going to continue that legacy and have Whistler’s work together as much as possible in his own collection. This does become an iconic space and does begin to exemplify this global cosmopolitanism that was very much a facet of Whistler’s practice.

0:01:35.0 Dr. Beth Harris: It’s important to remember that Whistler designed this space specifically for Leyland’s blue and white porcelain collection.

0:01:42.6 Dr. Diana Greenwold: So for Whistler and for Leyland, it was very much Chinese blue and white porcelain, but you can see as we look at Freer’s collection of ceramics, that is not what Freer’s taste was. But Whistler is, like everyone else, understanding Asian materials and objects filtered through a very small set of gallerists, of collectors, and that’s in fact what makes Charles Lang Freer so interesting is that he, at Whistler’s urging in fact, is one of the first of these generations of collectors who goes to Asia.

0:02:12.1 Dr. Beth Harris: It’s this moment of cosmopolitanism for American art, but also in general, this interest in the art of other cultures and the arts of the past. So let’s talk about what we see. Everywhere we look, we’re seeing patterning that is inspired by peacocks, and of course the peacock, the showiest of birds.

0:02:33.2 Dr. Diana Greenwold: And part of what I love about this space is the variety of ways that Whistler uses various facets of the peacock. So for instance, the shutters, we see full bodies of the peacock, but in the center space we have the heads and the bodies sort of at the top, and then this beautiful undulation of their cascading feathers. And then on either side we have the bodies at the bottom and that explosion of feathers coming out towards the top. But what’s so fantastic is that various facets of the actual feather then get repeated and overlapped in various sections of the space. So for instance, you’ll see along the bottom register overlapping kind of eyes of those peacock feathers. Along the central register, you get an inverse of that blue background with the gold painting, with the gold background and blue detailing. You get an almost chrysanthemum-like image and repeating pattern that very much looks to me like Whistler’s looking at Japanese textiles. And then on this upper register, famously, we have that gorgeous, rich blue-green color that Whistler paints over very expensive Spanish leather wall coverings that were not to Whistler’s taste. Then I’ll just also point you up at the ceiling where we get another version of those repeating feather patterns interspersed within this kind of Tudor-esque fretwork.

0:03:56.3 Dr. Beth Harris: And that’s a good moment to mention Thomas Jeckyll, who was the original designer of this room, but who was unable for health reasons to complete it.

0:04:05.4 Dr. Diana Greenwold: All of the shelving that was meant to house Leyland’s collection of blue and white porcelain, all of those beautiful patterns that evoke work from across Asia, that is all the innovation of Thomas Jeckyll.

0:04:17.9 Dr. Beth Harris: Whistler is brought in, and he’s asked to consult about color choices and other various things, and then Leyland goes away, asks Whistler to do a couple of things, and Whistler gets going.

0:04:30.0 Dr. Diana Greenwold: Whistler does come in here with the mandate for a few slight alterations, and because of the close personal relationship that he does feel like he has with Leyland, with Leyland’s family, he very much takes this opportunity to make for Leyland what he calls a beautiful surprise. He cannot imagine a world where Leyland would be anything but thrilled by returning to see this transformation.

0:04:52.6 Dr. Beth Harris: But when Leyland returns, a problem ensues.

0:04:56.0 Dr. Diana Greenwold: Leyland is not pleased that these changes have occurred. He’s doubly displeased that Whistler is asking the fee for work that Leyland did not commission. And so throughout their correspondence, we see that close relationship become increasingly acrimonious as Whistler begins to feel that his genius is not being appropriately appreciated.

0:05:19.3 Dr. Beth Harris: I understand both sides. Coming back and being presented with a bill for something you didn’t commission. On the other hand, Leyland knew that Whistler had these ideas about harmony and beauty and making these settings for his work that enhanced them. And this idea, I think, of the importance of the artist that is emerging at this time and the need for the artist to be free of the restrictions of a patron.

0:05:48.1 Dr. Diana Greenwold: Remember too, though, that Leyland has also been incredibly patient with Whistler, who is not always timely in bringing Leyland works that he’s paid for or that he’s commissioned. So for instance, for over a decade, Whistler has been laboring over a work called The Three Girls that was meant to adorn the other side of the room opposite from the princess from the land of porcelain. For Whistler, this is meant to be the apotheosis of his experimentation in painting practice, this idea that becomes deemed art for art’s sake.

0:06:17.7 Dr. Beth Harris: But I think that’s one reason that Whistler may have expected it all to be fine. Leyland had let him get away with quite a lot up until that moment, and one gets the sense that this was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

0:06:30.0 Dr. Diana Greenwold: Once this relationship basically dissolves, Leyland says essentially, finish it up and then be out of here and you’re not coming back.

0:06:37.5 Dr. Beth Harris: And he says, “I’ll give you half of the amount that you billed me for.”

0:06:41.8 Dr. Diana Greenwold: So Whistler, in order to complete the room, leaves Leyland with one of the great works of art to visualize that disintegrating relationship between artist and patron. And this is a mural that’s called Art and Money; or, The Story of the Room. So, what we’re looking at are two peacocks. We have one peacock on the left who is retreating, its tail feathers are down. We see that it has in fact a shock of white hair, which was what Whistler was famous for. We have an enlarged butterfly signature, which also indicates that this peacock is our artist, James McNeill Whistler. And then we have a furious peacock. His body is composed of gold and silver coinage, so much so that it’s dripping onto the floor below him. So this of course is our patron, Frederick Leyland.

0:07:28.7 Dr. Diana Greenwold: We see that Whistler has added these feathers at his neck, a reference to that ruff that Leyland liked to wear. And we see his tail feathers moving across the top register of the space. So very much a sense that this patron is advancing towards him, but refusing to give this money to the deserving artist. What’s sort of amazing is that Leyland keeps the room exactly as it is until he dies. He continues to eat dinner, hypothetically looking at this really pointed critique of his own incapacity to understand artistic genius.

0:08:05.2 Dr. Beth Harris: It makes me think about this moment in the late 19th century where there’s a real call for the independence of art from life, that it is something that is transcendent. And this plays out in a way in this relationship between Leyland and Whistler.

0:08:21.3 Dr. Diana Greenwold: Whistler is making a strident statement for artists as being able to use those tools of nature, but to be able to compose, to redefine, to imagine something that can be greater and a fuller instantiation of beauty. And that that appreciation of beauty in and of itself is a completely worthy and in fact divine pursuit.

This room at the National Museum of Asian Art

Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art

More on the Peacock Room from the National Museum of Asian Art

Lee Glazer, The Peacock Room Comes to America (Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, 2012).

Lee Glazer and Stacey Pierson, “Cosmopolitanism and Cultural Translation: A Conversation about James McNeill Whistler’s Peacock Room,” Winterthur Portfolio, volume 57, number 2–3 (Summer/Autumn 2023), pp. 123–44.

Linda Merrill, The Peacock Room: A Cultural Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

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