The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Window in the Peacock Room dates from about 1884.

Window in the Peacock Room, I. S. Gardner Museum

It is catalogued in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 990).

Images

Subject

Site

Window in the Peacock Room, I. S. Gardner Museum

N.E. corner of the Peacock Room, Freer Gallery of Art

A memory drawing of the windows of Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room y178, the house of Frederick Richards Leyland (1832-1892) in Princes Gate, London.

Technique

Composition

Window in the Peacock Room, I. S. Gardner Museum

Shutters in the Peacock Room, Freer Gallery of Art

This is a memory drawing, the only one that shows the windows, rather than the closed shutters. It is not a preliminary study for Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room y178.

Hadley considered the drawings were made in preparation for the decoration, but this is unlikely. ¹

History

Provenance

• ca 1884: drawn for Robert Goodloe Harper Pennington (1854 or 1855-d. 1920);
• 1904: given by Pennington to Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924), Boston;
• 1924: bequeathed to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

Exhibitions

It was not, as far as is known, exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (cat. no. 990) as 'Window in the Peacock Room'.
• Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 (cat. no. 178, ref.).

Books, General

• Carter, Morris, Isabella Stewart Gardner and Fenway Court, Boston and New York, 1925, pp. 103-05.
• Hadley, Rollin van N. (ed.), Drawings, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Boston, 1968, pp. 37-41, no. 18.
• Smith, Corinna Lindon, Interesting People, Norman, Oklahoma, 1962, p. 156.

Websites

• Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum website.