The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Whistler drew the Peacock shutters about 1884/1885 and gave it to Robert Goodloe Harper Pennington (1854 or 1855-d. 1920) , who gave it to Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924).

Peacock shutters, I.S. Gardner Museum

It is fully catalogued in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 991).

Images

Subject

Site

Peacock shutters, I.S. Gardner Museum

Shutters in the Peacock Room, Freer Gallery of Art

Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room y178 was at that time the dining room of the house of Frederick Richards Leyland (1832-1892) in Prince's Gate, London. Whistler did not have access to the room by this date, but may have had a photograph, or drawn the shutters from memory.

Technique

Composition

Peacock shutters, I.S. Gardner Museum

Shutters in the Peacock Room, Freer Gallery of Art

A drawing, possibly from memory, of shutters in Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room y178. In the central shutter, the right hand peacock has its wings more outspread than in the original, cutting across the vertical space between the peacocks.

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. 991) as 'Peacock shutters'.

Books on Whistler

• Merrill, Linda, The Peacock Room. A Cultural Biography, New Haven and London, 1998.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908, vol. 1, repr. f.p. 200.

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.