# La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine > James Abbott McNeill Whistler - 1863-1865, signed and dated 1864 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/james-mcneill-whistler/whistler-la-princesse-du-pays-de-la-porcelaine-peacock-room/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-27 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** James Abbott McNeill Whistler - **Date:** 1863-1865, signed and dated 1864 - **Medium:** Oil on canvas - **Dimensions:** 201.5 x 116.1 cm (79 5/16 x 45 11/16 in), as published by the holding institution, the Freer Gallery of Art. The University of Glasgow catalogue raisonne (YMSM 050) gives 199.9 x 116.0 cm (78 3/4 x 45 3/4 in). The discrepancy is not resolved in the sources consulted; it is small enough to be a difference between measuring with and without the frame rebate, but that is this record's inference, not a documented explanation. - **Object type:** Painting - **Period:** British Aesthetic Movement; American expatriate painting, nineteenth century - **Current location:** Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. Displayed above the fireplace in the Peacock Room, Gallery 12 (West Building), in a rehang titled 'The Peacock Room in Blue and White'. - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary Whistler painted this life-sized figure of a woman in a kimono, using the Anglo-Greek beauty Christine Spartali as his model, between 1863 and 1865, and could not sell it: Spartali's own father declined to buy his daughter's portrait, and the picture remained with the artist through a hostile reception at the 1865 Paris Salon. Frederick Leyland, the Liverpool shipping magnate, bought it by 1872 and hung it above his dining-room fireplace among his collection of Chinese porcelain - and then, when the architect designing the room around it fell ill, handed the project to Whistler, who painted over the leather walls, gilded the shelving, added gold peacocks, and billed Leyland 2,000 guineas for work he had never fully authorised. Leyland paid half, in pounds rather than the guineas convention demanded, and the two men never spoke again; Whistler answered inside the room itself, with a mural of two fighting peacocks he titled Art and Money.The painting and the room it now shares reached the Smithsonian by two completely separate routes. The picture was sold from Leyland's 1892 estate sale through two Glasgow dealers before Charles Lang Freer bought it in August 1903. The room itself, sold from the same house by a later, unrelated owner who disliked it, was dismantled into twenty-seven crates and shipped to Freer's house in Detroit in 1904 - eleven months after Freer had already bought the painting in a separate transaction. Both came to the Smithsonian by Freer's 1906 gift and have hung together since the Freer Gallery opened in 1923.One precision matters more than any other here: the blue-and-white porcelain now filling the room's shelves is not Leyland's. His collection was dispersed at auction in 1892; what visitors see today is drawn from Freer's own holdings, supplemented since 2019 with newly commissioned pieces because even Freer's collection could not fill the room the way Leyland's had. A separate, modern artwork, Darren Waterston's 2015 installation Filthy Lucre, reimagines the room in a state of decorative collapse and must never be mistaken for the historic room or for this painting. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1863-1865** The artist, James McNeill Whistler `[documented]` (creation) Painted in Whistler's studio, using Christine Spartali as the primary model, over the winter of 1863-64 and into 1865; signed and dated 'Whistler 1864'. - **1865** The artist, James McNeill Whistler `[documented]` (exhibition) Exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1865 as La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine, retained in the artist's ownership. - **1865-1872** Unclear; possibly Gambart's French Gallery, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and a collector reported as Frederick Huth `[disputed]` (gap / disputed intermediate ownership) Secondary sources describe a 1866 display at Gambart's French Gallery in London, a brief period with Rossetti, and a possible sale to Frederick Huth, with the picture back in Whistler's hands by 1867. The catalogue raisonne consulted for this record does not describe this period and moves directly from the 1865 Salon to the 1872 Leyland purchase. Flagged for verification against the catalogue raisonne's full provenance notes. - **1872-1892** Frederick Richards Leyland `[documented]` (purchase and display) Purchased by Leyland; on display at his London house, 49 Prince's Gate, by November 1872. Hung above the fireplace of the dining room subsequently rebuilt around it as the Peacock Room, 1876-77. No purchase price is given in the sources consulted. Some popular accounts give 1876 as the acquisition date, which this record treats as a conflation with the room's decoration date. - **1892-05-28** Alexander Reid (dealer, Glasgow), buying at auction `[documented]` (auction sale) Sold at Christie's, London, 28 May 1892, lot 39, following Leyland's death, and bought there by the Glasgow dealer Alexander Reid for 420 guineas - reported by the Pennells as four times what Whistler had originally received for the picture. - **1892-1895** Sir William Burrell, Glasgow `[documented]` (private sale) Sold by Reid to the Glasgow shipping magnate and collector William Burrell in 1894 or 1895. - **1903-08-20** Charles Lang Freer `[documented]` (purchase) Sold by Burrell to Charles Lang Freer on 20 August 1903, for 3,750 pounds sterling, reported at the time as 18,240 US dollars - a few weeks after Whistler's death on 17 July 1903. This transaction is entirely separate from, and eleven months earlier than, Freer's 1904 purchase of the Peacock Room itself. - **1906-1920** Charles Lang Freer, then his bequest `[documented]` (gift / bequest) Freer signed the deed of gift transferring his collection, including this painting, to the Smithsonian Institution in 1906. Freer died in 1919; the bequest was formally received by the Smithsonian in 1920 on completion of the Freer Gallery of Art. - **1923-present** Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution `[documented]` (permanent installation) The Freer Gallery opened to the public in 1923; the painting has hung above the fireplace of the reconstructed Peacock Room there ever since. Freer's bequest terms prohibit the painting from being lent outside the Gallery. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **1892-05-28** Christie's, - Estimate: Not given in the sources consulted. - Hammer: 420 guineas - With premium: Not separately documented in the sources consulted; nineteenth-century Christie's sales of this kind are not generally recorded with a distinct buyer's premium in the literature reviewed, and this record does not assume one existed. - Lot 39 of the estate sale following Frederick Leyland's death, bought by the Glasgow dealer Alexander Reid. Reported by the Pennells as four times the sum Whistler had originally been paid for the picture. Corrected 2026-09-27: that sum IS given, at Pennell 1908 volume 1 page 124, where Whistler agreed to take a hundred pounds through Rossetti; Whistler himself, drafting a letter in 1892, said a hundred pounds and then added that he believed it was fifty and could not remember. 420 guineas is 441 pounds, nearer four times a hundred than four times fifty. The Pennells' own report of the multiple is at volume 2 page 127, not volume 1. ## Open questions - What exactly happened to the painting between the 1865 Paris Salon and its documented purchase by Leyland by November 1872. Some accounts describe a passage through Gambart's French Gallery, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and a possible sale to a collector named Frederick Huth around 1866-67; this record could not verify that chain against a primary source and grades it disputed. - The Catherine of Aragon dowry attribution given for the room's original sixteenth-century leather wall covering is repeated across secondary sources without a cited chain-of-custody document; no source consulted for this record traces the claim to a primary record. - How much, if any, of Leyland's original Kangxi-period porcelain survives today, and where. It was dispersed at the 1892 Christie's estate sale and none of it is documented as having reached Freer or the Smithsonian. - Whether Whistler's uninvited alterations to the room, made while Leyland was away and beyond the retouching he had authorised, amounted to a breach of the working understanding between them, or were simply an artistic and social overreach with no contractual dimension. No litigation over the room is recorded in the sources consulted. - The precise sequence in which the Art and Money mural was painted or reworked relative to the final breach with Leyland is described inconsistently across secondary sources, some placing the addition of the two fighting peacocks after Whistler had effectively been dismissed from the house. - Whether the intermediate 1865-1872 ownership history of the painting, if the Rossetti/Huth episode is accurate, was known to Leyland at the time of his purchase, and whether it affected the price he paid; no purchase price for the 1872 sale is given in any source consulted. ## Sources - [1] University of Glasgow, 'The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler', catalogue raisonne entry YMSM 050, La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine. - [2] Wikipedia, 'The Princess from the Land of Porcelain'. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with the full catalogue raisonne provenance notes where they diverge. - [3] Wikipedia, 'Peacock Room'. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with primary Freer Gallery archival material. - [4] Smithsonian Magazine, 'The Story Behind the Peacock Room's Princess'. - [5] Wayne State University / Freer Gallery of Art, 'The Peacock Room: In Detroit'. - [6] Aileen Tsui, 'Whistler's La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine: Painting Re-Oriented', Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 9, no. 2 (Autumn 2010). - [7] University of Glasgow, Whistler correspondence project, biography of Christine Spartali. - [8] Artnet News, 'James McNeill Whistler's 'The Peacock Room' Is a Glittering Masterpiece With a Dark History'. - [9] Wikipedia, 'Cuir de Cordoue'. Tertiary source for the leather wall hangings; the Catherine of Aragon dowry claim is repeated here without a cited primary document. - [10] The Art Newspaper, 'Whistler's famed Peacock Room, vibrant and revamped, reopens following major conservation project', 2 September 2022. - [11] Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, object record for The Princess from the Land of Porcelain, accession F1903.91a-b. - [12] Smithsonian Institution Newsdesk, 'Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery Welcomes Peacock Room REMIX: Darren Waterston's Filthy Lucre'. - [13] Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, object record for The Gold Scab: Eruption in Frilthy Lucre (The Creditor). - [14] University of Glasgow, catalogue raisonne entry YMSM 208, The Gold Scab. - [15] National Museum of Asian Art, exhibition record, 'The Peacock Room in Blue and White'. - [16] Wikipedia, 'James McNeill Whistler'. Tertiary source for the artist biography; flagged for replacement with a scholarly biography (e.g. MacDonald or Anderson and Koval). - [17] Wikimedia Commons, file and licence record for the lead image, verified directly against the API. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.