"Paintings With Personality"

The fighting peacocks in the Peacock Room

            Honey and I happened to be in DC last week where we visited the National Gallery of Art and saw the Wyeth exhibit, and the Degas/Cassatt exhibit. After a late lunch, we got on the metro and traveled to the Smithsonian stop to visit the Freer/Sackler gallery. There we went to Whistler’s “Peacock Room” and browsed through the Whistler exhibit.

            I have seen a lot of Wyeth’s work, having been a frequent visitor of the Brandywine River Museum and the Farnsworth Museum in Rockport, Maine. I can never get enough of studying his very stimulating, abstract designs or the way he handles light. I especially liked the National Gallery exhibit because they displayed so many of the “loose” sketches and watercolor studies which Wyeth made in preparation for his larger works. It was possible to see his process in a clear and focused way. His grasp of art and the strength of his work were inspiring.

            I read (somewhere, but can’t remember where) that all of Wyeth’s work was done in solitude. He left for his studio at 9:00 each morning and returned at 5:00 that evening. To me, it seems such a disciplined and impossible life. Few of us have a spouse who will take care of everything, family, household, or all of the business of living. Nor do we have the ability to design or paint the way Andrew Wyeth painted.

            The Degas/Cassatt exhibit was interesting as well. I knew they had been friends, but didn’t know to what extent. They both got their inspiration from the human form and from modern life, and they both enjoyed experimenting with mixed media and print making. They and several of their impressionist friends collaborated on a journal of original prints which was never actually published. Some of those prints can be seen in the show. Also to be seen are several etchings by Degas with Mary Cassatt as the subject, roaming around the Louvre. The Louvre was about the only place the two of them could go since Cassatt was restricted, by society, from visiting many public places. Later in life, the two went in different art directions but they remained friends until Edgar Degas death in 1917.

The Princess from the Land of Porcelain

            I had seen the Peacock Room before but love the story and wanted our son and his wife to enjoy the experience. The Peacock Room was created by James McNeill Whistler and titled Harmony in Blue and Gold. It was commissioned by Frederick Leyland to be his dining room, and designed by Thomas Jeckyll. Among other things, Jeckyll built intricate walnut shelving and hung gilded leather on the walls. A painting by Whistler titled “The Princess from the Land of Porcelain” hung above the fireplace. Whistler was working on the entrance hall of Leyland’s house, when Jeckyll was working on the dining room. Jeckyll consulted with him about what color to paint the dining room doors and shutters. When Whistler volunteered to retouch the walls with a little yellow, Leyland agreed and returned to some business in another part of England.

            With Leland gone, Whistler decided to make bigger and more courageous changes. He covered the ceiling with imitation gold leaf and painted peacock feathers. Then he gilded the walnut shelving and covered the shutters with beautiful peacocks. Whistles wrote Leyland that the dining room was gorgeous, and asked him not to return to London until the room was completely finished. While Leland was temporarily out of the picture, Whistler used the room to entertain his own guests and the press, without asking Leland’s permission. That behavior and an argument over payment for the project elicited a bitter quarrel. Whistler ended up getting partial payment and was angry enough to cover Leyland’s valuable leather wall with Prussian-blue paint showing a pair of fighting peacocks with coins thrown at their feet.

        Leland used the room until his death. Twelve years later it was removed from his house and exhibited in a London art gallery. Charles Freer bought the room, had it taken apart and installed in his house in Detroit. The Peacock Room went to Washington DC in 1919 where it underwent renovation. Recently, the room again underwent conservation and can be viewed at the Freer Gallery in DC.