On 31st December 1884 the following amusing letter appeared in The World, signed with the well-known butterfly. “Atlas, look at this! It has been culled from the Plumber and Decorator, of all insidious prints, and forwarded to me by the untiring people who daily supply me with the thinkings of my critics. Read, Atlas, and let me execute myself. ‘The “Peacock” drawing-room of a well-to-do shipowner, of Liverpool, at Prince’s Gate, London, is hand painted, representing the noble bird with wings expanded, painted by an Associate of the Royal Academy, at a cost of £7000, and fortunate in claiming his daughter as his bride, and is one of the finest specimens of high art in decoration in the kingdom. The mansion is of modern construction.’
“He is not guilty, this honest Associate! It was I, Atlas, who did this thing—alone I did it—I ‘hand painted’ this room in the ‘mansion of modern construction.’ Woe is me! I secreted, in the provincial shipowner’s home, the ‘noble bird with wings expanded’—I perpetrated in harmless obscurity, ‘the finest specimen of high-art decoration’—and the Academy is without stain in the art of its member. Also the immaculate character of that Royal body has been falsely impugned by this wicked Plumber! Mark these things, Atlas, that justice may be done, the innocent spared, and history cleanly written.”
Whistler’s picture “La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine” had been hung by Mr. F. R. Leyland in his mansion at Prince’s Gate, and Whistler could not reconcile himself to its appearance against the valuable Spanish leather on the walls. He was to correct this by treating a little of the wall; meanwhile Mr. Leyland went down into the country. When he returned it was to find that Whistler was painting over the whole of the room. Much money had already been spent on the original leather scheme, and Whistler had quickly effaced all appearance of its intrinsic worth, but he was in the rapid process of creating the famous Peacock Room. Dissension took place as to terms under the circumstances, and Whistler finished the room with a panel of two peacocks fighting, emblematic of the quarrel. Mr. Leyland was considered one of the most discriminating patrons of his time. Just previous to the above events the interior of the house had been reconstructed and decorated in accordance with designs by Norman Shaw and Jekyll. The leather had been the latter architect’s scheme for the room where the “Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine” was hung. The walls were fitted with shelves designed for the display of blue china. Whistler painted all the window shutters with gold peacocks on a blue ground, and a panel at the end of the room, which had been reserved for a picture commissioned from him; into this panel he put the fighting peacocks, whose eyes were real jewels, the one a ruby and the other a diamond. It was found possible to move all the decoration without injury and some time after the original owner’s death this was done, the purchaser taking it to America. Before it left England it was set up temporarily for the purpose of its exhibition at Messrs. Obach’s Gallery. The picture “The Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine,” the key-note, was however missing from the scheme, having found another purchaser.
The room was the finest example of a less known side of Whistler’s art. His designs sprung straight from himself, they had no connection with any European tradition. He accepted in their entirety the conventions, the arrangements and devices of the Japanese designers. Yet his designs could not have been created by any of the great artists of Japan. There is too much vitality about them, and these peacocks which belong to a pattern and are conventionalised to the last degree, have a more startling reality than any peacock painted in a modern picture. No one knows how Whistler came to know so much about peacocks. A duffer can paint the bird until he comes to the neck—and then we have to turn to photographs for the reality that gives us pleasure, it eludes all modern genius. So for the most part, fortunately, peacocks are left severely alone. The dancing of the premiÈre danseuse at the Empire, perfected with ardent years of study, is a less recondite theme of movement than a peacock raising its head. It is a delight, to all those who love it, beside which all dancing pales, more gracious and stately in movement than the accumulated grace of many women. That is how it must always seem to those who really know it. Whistler arrived at perfect understanding by the instinctive route on which he never went astray.
After the peacock-room incident the wildest legends were afloat about the whole matter, one of them that the architect had been driven mad by the sight of what had happened to his leather, and that later he was found at home painting peacocks blue and gold all over the floor.
