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

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

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Description of Pictures: The Peacock Room in Blue and White
May 18, 2019—June 5, 2022
Blue-and-white Chinese porcelains once again fill the shelves of the Peacock Room, just as they did in the 1870s, when Frederick Leyland, a shipping magnate in London, dined there.
Blue-and-white porcelain dating to the Kangxi period enliven the east and north walls of the Peacock Room. These pieces from the permanent collection of the Freer Gallery are similar to what Leyland would have displayed. Recently commissioned ceramics line the west and south walls. These new porcelains are part of a 1,500-year-old tradition of making porcelains in Jingdezhen, China. Porcelain production during the Kangxi period (1662–1722) expanded China’s export trade with Europe, sparked the Chinamania craze in the nineteenth century, and bolstered the East-West exchange that endures to this day.
When artist James McNeill Whistler was asked to consult on colors in Leyland’s dining room, the sinuous patterns and brilliant colors of the Kangxi ware on display served as immediate inspiration. Whistler painted over the room in a flurry of blue and gold. His intricate patterns resemble the plumage of peacocks and create a tonal counterpoint to the porcelains. The Peacock Room in Blue and White allows us to experience the room in much the same way Whistler originally envisioned it.

Peacock Room Revealed
To prepare for this installation of blue-and-white porcelains, the shelves of the Peacock Room were cleared, providing an unobstructed view of the colors and peacock patterns that Whistler used to transform this dining room into “a harmony in blue and gold.”
In 1876 and 1877, Whistler enhanced Frederick Leyland’s dining room with golden peacocks. He painted every inch of the ceiling and walls to create an elegant setting in which Leyland could display his collection of Kangxi porcelain as well as Whistler’s 1864 painting The Princess from the Land of Porcelain over the mantelpiece. Charles Lang Freer purchased the room in 1 ...More...

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SIFGPE_210730_005.JPG: The Peacock Room in Blue and White Since its dramatic transformation from a dining room into a work of art, the Peacock Room has experienced a dramatic historic. In the early 1870s its walls were covered with floral-embossed leather. Frederick Leyland, the dining room's owner, used the space to display his collection of Chinese porcelain after James McNeill Whistler painted every surface -- walls, shutters, and ceiling -- with peacock motifs. In 1904, Charles Lang Freer purchased this room, shipped it from London, installed it in his home in Detroit, Michigan, and displayed ceramics from throughout Asia on its shelves. When the Freer Gallery of Art opened in 1923, the shelves were sparsely filled. Freer's Asian ceramics again enlivened the space from 2012 to 2019. The room has now been returned to its late nineteenth-century appearance.
2. SIFGPE_210730_017.JPG: The Peacock Room in Blue and White Late in the 1870s, Frederick Leyland filled the gilded shelves of the Peacock Room with his prized collection of blue-and-white Chinese porcelain. To recreate the room's appearance today, ceramics from the Freer Gallery's permanent collection -- and similar to Leyland's pieces from the Kangxi period (1662-1722) -- are displayed on the north (fireplace) and east (shutters) walls. New pieces in a "Kangxi style" were commissioned from a porcelain production center in Jingdezhen, China. Those ceramics adorn the south (peacock mural) and west (doors) walls. When seen together, the Chinese porcelains placed before the painted walls provide a glimpse into James McNeill Whistler's colorful vision of the Peacock Room.
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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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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC -- Freer Gallery of Art -- Exhibit: Peacock Room) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2019_DC_SIFG_Peacock: DC -- Freer Gallery of Art -- Exhibit: The Peacock Room (Two versions) (48 photos from 2019)
- 2017_DC_SIFG_Peacock: DC -- Freer Gallery of Art -- Exhibit: Peacock Room (35 photos from 2017)
- 2013_DC_SIFG_Peacock: DC -- Freer Gallery of Art -- Exhibit: Peacock Room (7 photos from 2013)
- 2011_DC_SIFG_Peacock: DC -- Freer Gallery of Art -- Exhibit: Peacock Room (20 photos from 2011)
- 2008_DC_SIFG_Peacock: DC -- Freer Gallery of Art -- Exhibit: Peacock Room (8 photos from 2008)
- 2004_DC_SIFG_Peacock: DC -- Freer Gallery of Art -- Exhibit: Peacock Room (8 photos from 2004)
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)]
2021 photos: This year was filled with hope. Yes, the COVID-19 pandemic is still with us but it was hoped that restoring sanity to the White House. the rapid vaccine role-out, and a government that finally cared would put things back to normal again. But the force was strong in the evil anti-vaxxer movement and the virus variants made quick use of that so we're still dealing with this crap. Plus the continued impact of the Trump putsch attempt... Sigh. Trips this year: (May, October) After getting fully vaccinated, I made two trips down to Asheville, NC to visit my dad and his wife Dixie, and (mid-July) I made a quick trip up to Stockbridge, MA to see the Norman Rockwell Museum again as well as Daniel Chester French's place @ Chesterwood. Number of photos taken this year: about 283,000, slightly up from 2020 but still really low.
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