"From the moment of its inception, the Peacock Room has been a personal, artistic, and cultural battleground." 

Designed in the late 19th century, the Peacock Room’s golden walls witnessed a crumbling friendship, enraged disputes over artistic tastes, and the demise of artist James McNeill Whistler's (1834 - 1903) Post-Impressionist career. A new exhibition called Ruffled Feathers at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, uncovers the theatrical twists and turns behind the room's creation (running until Jan 2027). Here's all you need to know about the fascinating dining room.

Caprice in Purple and Gold: The Golden Screen painting (1864) by James McNeill Whistler.
Credit: James McNeill Whistler / National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution,
Freer Collection, Gift of Charles Lang Freer. 

The Artist & His Patron

In 1876, Frederick Leyland (1831-1892), a British shipping magnate, commissioned his friend and Post-Impressionist artist James McNeill Whistler (1834 - 1903) to redecorate his dining room. Enthralled by the Victorian-era's 'Chinamania' fad, Whistler was an enthusiastic collector of Japanese woodblock prints, textiles and blue-and-white Chinese porcelain. He convinced Leyland to also collect Chinese ceramics, and the dining room was partly designed to house the businessman's growing collection. 

A Chinese porcelain covered square canister and saucer dish drawing (1876) by James McNeill Whistler.
Credit: James McNeill Whistler / National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution,
Freer Collection, Gift of Charles Lang Freer. 

As such, it was these commissions that made Whistler (a recognised etching artist who also struggled with his finances and gaining respect for his paintings) feel valued. The inevitable rift was a "tragic end to Whistler’s lucrative relationship with his patron, whom he felt was one of the few people who really appreciated his art,” said Linda Merrill, a Whistler scholar, art historian at Emory University and a former curator at the National Museum of Asian Art, in a Smithsonian article. 

Elinor Leyland (1873) by James McNeill Whistler. Credit: James McNeill Whistler / National
Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Freer Collection, Gift of Charles Lang Freer. 

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Whistler's penchant for Asian aesthetics first intruded on Leyland's dining room in 1865 in the elegant portrait of a white woman in a kimono holding a fan. From here, Whistler smothered the doors, ceiling, and walls with a sensual “harmony in blue and gold”. he self-made Leyland was horrified by the garish designs and, calling him a “con artist,” refused to pay the artist's requested fee (the modern-day equivalent of over $200,000). With the latter sensitive to appearing nouveau riche and the artist sensitive to criticism of his work, their decade-long friendship inevitably came crashing down. 

Whistler responded by furiously painting over several panels of decorative embossed Spanish leather that Leyland had placed on the walls. “That was a pretty audacious thing to do,” said Merrill. But his most climactic and insolent act was the mural of two peacocks illustrated across the dining room’s south wall. 

White Woman in a Kimono, the Peacock Room at the National Museum of Asian Art

Maximalism isn't for everyone- and the pair of gold and blue birds infuriated Leyland, who desired a typically sombre Whistler composition. To make matters worse, the mural was clearly a caricature of the former friends. With one bird standing angry (representing Leyland) and the other subdued (Whistler), it depicted the businessman as proud and indignant.

“He sat in that room at the head of his table looking at that vicious portrait of himself as an avaricious peacock with ruffled feathers, until he died,” said Lee Glazer, a former curator at the museum and a senior curator at Maryland's Academy Art Museum, in the same Smithsonian article. Inevitably, the artist was banished from the room and Leyland's company till the end of his days.

The fallout from the episode did nothing to aid Whistler's commissioned work. While the story of the room was hot gossip and made it to the papers, the painter's new-found fame was bitter-sweet. He had been paid half of what he thought he deserved, and because it was a private residence, he could not put the work on display to garner new commissions, nor re-sell it. 

In 1877, he received a scorching review of his painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1877) from John Ruskin (1819-1900), and sued the artist and critic. Only two years later, he continued to create caricatures of his former patron, including a biting satirical painting called The Gold Scab (1879). It seemed that Whistler always blamed Leyland for his financial downfall, and soon declared bankruptcy. 

The Peacock Room at the National Museum of Asian Art

A New Lease Of Life

Despite its exaggerated notoriety and being the subject of much gossip among Victorian society at the time, the room became such a novelty that it was bought by collector Charles Lang Freer in 1904, who took it apart, shipped it across the Atlantic to Detroit, and used it to house his own assortment of ceramics from across Asia and the Middle East. He favoured objects in monochromatic tones with matte, textured surfaces, and he arranged them on the Peacock Room’s shelves largely by colour. 

For Freer, the room embodied his belief that “all works of art go together, whatever their period,” and he invited artists and scholars to discern the variety of cultures and eras underpinning his collection. It's this tradition of observation and discussion that the museum hopes to inspire in viewers today. 

Charles Lang Freer's ceramic collection, the Peacock Room at the National Museum of Asian Art