Whistler’s Art, Japonisme and the Making of the Peacock Room

James Abbott McNeill Whistler made a career out of crossing boundaries: between American and European art, painted scenes and decorative design, and public acclaim and controversy. His work drew on Japanese objects and styles while keeping a close eye on London’s river, streets and people. The Peacock Room, his most famous decorative project, grew from that mix—and from a dispute with its owner.

From Lowell to Paris

Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1834. His family moved to Saint Petersburg in 1843, where his father worked on the railway to Moscow. Whistler later claimed during a London libel trial that he had been born in Russia, explaining that he “did not choose to be born in Lowell.” He studied at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts from age 11. After his father died of cholera, he attended West Point from 1851 to 1854, then learned etching while working for the US Geodetic and Coast Survey.

In 1855, he left the United States for Paris and studied at the Gleyre Academy. He encountered Gustave Courbet’s work at the Universal Exposition and quickly absorbed its influence. A set of etchings based on a walking tour through Alsace-Lorraine and the Rhineland brought him early notice in 1858. Some surviving paintings from the same period already show loose brushwork, quite different from the disciplined approach expected at the academy. Whistler also cultivated a reputation as a stylish man about town.

Head of Old Man Smoking and Old Mother Gerard, both painted around 1858–59, display the free handling of paint that would become an important part of his practice.

Whistler moved to London in 1859 and kept his studio there until 1892. His early London views record the city’s working life and weather as well as its appearance. The Thames in Ice (1860), for instance, turns a harsh winter into the subject of a carefully arranged painting.

White paintings, river views and Japanese influence

Whistler travelled to Brittany to paint in 1862, then spent the winter in Paris. He began living with Joanna Hiffernan, who modelled for Symphony in White No. 1: The White Girl. The Royal Academy rejected the painting in 1862. Its pale figure against a pale background unsettled viewers accustomed to clearer narrative and contrast. At the 1863 Salon des Refusés in Paris, it appeared alongside Édouard Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’Herbe and met a similarly scandalised response.

Friendship with the Greaves brothers led Whistler to paint more of the Thames, including Grey and Silver: Old Battersea Reach (1863). His mother joined him in London in 1864, tempering his social life until she moved out in 1875. He also came into contact with the Pre-Raphaelites and developed an interest in Asian art. Henri Fantin-Latour and Félix Bracquemond had introduced him to Japonisme while he was in Paris in 1858, and both remained close friends.

The Princess from the Land of Porcelain (1863–65) brings that interest into the foreground. Its model, Christine Spartali, wears a silk kimono and holds a fan; a Japanese screen and a blue-and-white carpet complete the setting. The painting was shown at the Paris Salon in 1865, sold to a collector, and returned to Whistler in 1867. It later became the visual centre of the Peacock Room.

In Variations in Flesh Colour and Green — The Balcony, begun in 1864 and completed in 1879, Japanese visual ideas shape the lower portion of the composition. The grey structures behind it are London warehouses and factories on the Thames. Whistler was combining an imported visual language with the industrial city around him.

He painted with Courbet at Trouville in 1865, producing Crepuscule in Opal: Trouville. The next year, he travelled to Chile at an invitation, during a conflict involving Spain. He stayed clear of the fighting, kept a detailed journal and painted Crepuscule in Flesh Colour and Green: Valparaiso. The trip took him closer to the Americas than at any point since he left in 1855. After returning, he painted Symphony in White and Red, around 1868.

Nocturnes, the Peacock Room and a costly dispute

From 1871, Whistler developed a series of Thames nocturnes, including Variations in Pink and Grey: Chelsea. That year he also painted Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, widely known as Whistler’s Mother. The Royal Academy first rejected it, then displayed it in an unfavourable spot. The French state bought it in 1891; it is now at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Whistler declined an invitation to show work at the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874, possibly on Fantin-Latour’s advice.

In 1876, shipping magnate Frederick Richards Leyland hired Whistler to decorate his London mansion. Leyland had assigned the dining room to an architect experienced in Anglo-Japanese design. Whistler was working on the entrance hall when he proposed changes to the dining room. With Leyland away, those revisions expanded into a complete decorative scheme, with The Princess from the Land of Porcelain as its focal point. The resulting Peacock Room made Whistler’s blend of art and interior design unmistakable, but the scale of the changes damaged his relationship with his patron.

When Leyland returned, the two quarrelled and parted ways. The room’s contents were bought from Leyland’s heirs in 1904, moved to the United States and opened to the public at the Freer Gallery in Washington, DC, in 1923. Its journey from a private dining room to a museum display helped secure the work’s place in Whistler’s legacy.

The break with Leyland came as Whistler faced another public conflict. Eight of his paintings appeared in the Grosvenor Gallery’s opening exhibition in 1877. Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket drew particular criticism from John Ruskin, who published a harsh review. Whistler sued Ruskin for libel and won, but received just a farthing—0.6 pence—in damages. Legal costs left him bankrupt in 1879, and he went to Venice for a year to make etchings.

Portraits, printmaking and late recognition

Back in London, Whistler returned to portraiture, including Harmony in Pink and Grey: Portrait of Lady Meux (1881–82). His Venice etchings were shown at the Fine Art Society in 1883. The following year, he visited St Ives with his assistant Mortimer Menpes and painter Walter Sickert, making small seascapes. In London he also turned to shopfronts. As reviews improved, he became president of the Society of British Artists in 1886. His position in portraiture grew more competitive when John Singer Sargent moved his studio from Paris to London that year.

A one-man retrospective at London’s Goupil Gallery in 1892 finally brought Whistler broad critical success. He then spent two years in Paris and increasingly focused on lithography. From 1898 to 1901, he taught at an art academy in Paris opened by his former model Carmen Rossi. Gwen John was the academy’s apparent success story. Whistler died in London in 1903 and was buried there.

Whistler’s career also unfolded alongside other American artists working abroad. Winslow Homer spent 1881–82 in the fishing village of Cullercoats in north-east England, a formative period for his watercolours before his return to the United States. Sargent, born in Florence in 1856 to an expatriate American family with Philadelphia roots, worked across Europe, spent much of his career in London and later spent more time in the United States. He died in Chelsea, London, in 1925. Their lives resist simple national labels. For Whistler, that cross-border experience became part of the work itself: European training, American beginnings, London subjects and Japanese influence, all held together by a distinctive eye for colour and composition.