BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Freer Gallery of Art -- Exhibit: Peacock Room

DC -- Freer Gallery of Art -- Exhibit: Peacock Room:

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1. SIFGPE_040109_03.JPG: Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room The Peacock Room was originally the dining room in the London home of Frederick Richards Leyland, a wealthy shipowner from Liverpool, England, who was James McNeill Whistler's leading patron. The architect Thomas Jeckyll designed the room, constructing an intricate lattice of shelving to contain Leyland's collection of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain, mostly from the Kangsi era (1662-1722) of the Qing dynasty. Antique Dutch gilt leather hung on the walls and a painting by Whistler, "The Princess from the Land of Porcelain," was given the place of honor above the fireplace. Jeckyll had nearly completed his decorative scheme when an illness compelled him to abandon the project. Whistler, who was decorating the entrance hall of Leyland's house, volunteered to finish Jeckyll's work in the dining room. Concerned that the red roses adorning the leather wall hangings clashed with the colors in "The Princess," Whistler suggested retouching the leather with yellow paint, and Leyland agreed to that minor alteration. He also authorized Whistler to embellish the cornice and wainscoting with a "wave pattern" derived from the design in Jeckyll's leaded-glass door, and then went to his home in Liverpool. During Leyland's absence, Whistler grew bolder with his revisions. He covered the ceiling with squares of dutch metal (imitation gold leaf) and a lush pattern of peacock feathers, gilded the spindle shelving, and painted an array of magnificent peacocks on the inside panels of the shutters. As word of his remarkable decoration got out, Whistler began entertaining visitors and amusing the press in Leyland's home -- audacious behavior that, coupled with a dispute over payment for the project, provoked a bitter quarrel between the painter and his patron. Consequently, Whistler coated the costly leather with prussian-blue paint and on the vacant wall opposite "The Princess" depicted a pair of fighting peacocks. The angry bird on the right was given silver throat feathers in reference to the white ruffled shirts that Leyland always wore; the other, docile peacock was crowned with a silver cresh feather reminiscent of the single white lock that rose artfully above Whistler's forehead. Regarding the dining-room decorations as a three-dimensional painting, the artist obtained a blue rug for the floor, signed the composition several times with his butterfly emblem, and gave the room the title "Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room." The Peacock Room remained intact and fully furnished with Chinese porcelain until Leyland's death in 1892. Twelve years later, it was sold to the collector Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919), who had purchased Whistler's "Princess" only the previous year. The room was dismantled in 1904 and moved to Freer's house in Detroit, where it was used to display his own collection of ceramics. After Freer's death in 1919, the Peacock Room was reinstalled in the Freer Gallery of Art, which opened to the public in 1923. The Chinese porcelain now on the shelves is similar to the collection for which the room was originally designed.
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Description of Subject Matter: The Peacock Room Comes to America
April 9, 2011 – January 3, 2016
For the first time, the Freer Gallery's renowned Peacock Room has been restored to its appearance in 1908, when museum founder Charles Lang Freer used it to organize and display more than 250 ceramics from all over Asia. The first special exhibition in this room since its conservation in 1993, The Peacock Room Comes to America highlights Freer's belief in "points of contact" between American and Asian art and underscores the relationship among the museum's diverse collections.
Originally designed by architect Thomas Jeckyll, the Peacock Room was once the dining room for British shipping magnate Frederick Leyland, who wanted a place to showcase his blue-and-white Chinese porcelain collection in his London home. When American artist James McNeill Whistler redecorated the room in 1876 as a "harmony in blue and gold," he too was inspired by the delicate patterns and vivid colors of the pots. Their slick surfaces did not appeal to Freer, however, who favored complex surface texture and subtly toned glazes. When Freer purchased the Peacock Room in 1904 and moved it from London to Detroit, he filled the shelves with pots he had collected from countries as diverse as Egypt, Iran, Japan, China, and Korea. Freer's ceramics are absorbing individually and as part of the full installation, which he thoughtfully designed to form a harmonized whole. After Freer's death (1854-1919), the Peacock Room was installed in the Freer Gallery of Art and is on permanent display.
Wikipedia Description: The Peacock Room
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room (better known as The Peacock Room) is James McNeill Whistler's masterpiece of interior decorative mural art. He painted the panelled room in a rich and unified palette of brilliant blue-greens with over-glazing and metallic gold leaf. Painted between 1876–77, it now is considered one of the greatest surviving aesthetic interiors, and best examples of the Anglo-Japanese style.

History

The Peacock Room was originally designed as a dining room in the townhouse located at 49 Prince's Gate in the neighbourhood of Kensington in London, and owned by the British shipping magnate Frederick Richards Leyland. Leyland engaged the British architect Richard Norman Shaw to remodel and redecorate his home. Shaw entrusted the remodelling of the dining room to Thomas Jeckyll, another British architect experienced in the Anglo-Japanese style. Jeckyll conceived the dining room as a Porsellanzimmer (porcelain room).

He covered the walls with 6th-century wall hangings of Cuir de Cordoue that had been originally brought to England as part of the dowry of Catherine of Aragon. They were painted with her heraldic device, the open pomegranate, and a series of red roses, Tudor roses, to symbolise her union with Henry VIII. They had hung on the walls of a Tudor style house in Norfolk for centuries, before they were bought by Leyland for �1,000. Against these walls, Jekyll constructed an intricate lattice framework of engraved spindled walnut shelves that held Leyland’s collection of Chinese blue and white porcelain, mostly from the Kangxi era of the Qing dynasty.

To the south of the room, a walnut welsh dresser was placed in the centre, just below the large empty leather panel, and flanked on both sides by the framework shelves. On the east side, three tall windows parted the room overlooking a private park, and covered by full-length walnut shutters. To the north a fireplace, over ...More...
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- 2023_DC_SIFG_Peacock: DC -- Freer Gallery of Art -- Exhibit: Peacock Room (8 photos from 2023)
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Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [(Smithsonian) Freer Gallery of Art] [Display ALL (Smithsonian) Freer Gallery of Art photos] [Museums (Art)]
2004 photos: Trips this year: (1) Margot and I went off to Scotland for a few days, my first time overseas. (2) I went to Hawaii on business (such a deal!) and extended it, spending a week in Hawaii and another in California. (3) I went to Tennessee to man a booth and extended it to go to my third Fan Fair country music festival. Equipment this year: I bought two Fujifilm S7000 digital cameras. While they produced excellent images, I found all of the retractable-lens Fuji models had a disturbing tendency to get dust inside the lens. Dark blurs would show up on the images and the camera had to be sent back to the shop in order to get it fixed. I returned one of the cameras when the blurs showed up in the first month. I found myself buying extended warranties on cameras. Number of photos taken this year: 110,000.
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