# The Picture Her Father Refused > The Peacock Room is built around a portrait of Christine Spartali that her own father declined to buy. The refusal rests on one memoir, and no price was ever named. > The Study - 2026-09-27 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-picture-her-father-refused/ ## Key points - The most famous decorative interior in American art is built around a portrait the sitter's family would not take. Michael Spartali did not like it and objected to it as a portrait of his daughter, so it went to Rossetti to sell instead. - That refusal rests on one memoir. The Pennells published it in 1908, forty-four years after the event, reporting the recollection of the sitter's sister. Every later account, the catalogue raisonne included, descends from that one passage. - No price was ever named for the refusal. The hundred pounds belongs to the next transaction, Rossetti's sale, and Whistler himself could not remember in 1892 whether it was a hundred or fifty. Any figure attached to the offer to her father would be invented. - The nearest independent corroboration is about other painters. Michael Spartali commissioned four still lifes from Fantin-Latour in 1866 and paid for only two, which the catalogue's editors attribute to Alphonse Legros persuading him they were all alike, and by November 1868 Fantin was asking Whistler whether another buyer was going to be like Spartali, a collector who does not like them. - She has a documented later life and it is short. She married Comte Edouard Cahen d'Anvers, had two sons, was living in Rome and died at thirty-eight, on 27 September 1884 in the Tyrol on the one genealogical account that records it. Her husband was made Marquis of Torre Alfina five months after she died, so she was never the marquise some genealogies give her. - Nothing survives in her own voice. The Whistler correspondence indexes her with five documents and every one of them was written by somebody else. There is no record of what she thought of the picture, or whether she ever saw it again. ## The refusal is one sentence in one memoir ## No price was ever named for the offer to her father ## Refusing pictures had happened before, and that part is primary ## What the only witness says about the sittings ## What became of her, which our record gave in six words ## Four things our own record had wrong The Peacock Room is one of the most visited interiors in America and its subject is a young woman whose own family sent the picture back. What survives of her is a memoir written by other people forty-four years later, one letter in which the painter mentions that she is ill, three men naming her between 1877 and 1892, a lost pencil drawing, two photographs and a date of death in a genealogist's compilation that offers two dates and two countries. What does not survive is a price, a sentence in her own hand or any indication that she ever looked at the finished thing. The picture became a room, the room became a museum's centrepiece, and the person it is of became a caption. Naming her properly and saying plainly how thin the evidence for the famous anecdote is are the two things an archive can still do for her. ## Questions **Who is the woman in Whistler's La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine?** Christine Spartali, later Comtesse Edouard Cahen d'Anvers, the younger daughter of the Anglo-Greek merchant Michael Spartali. Whistler met her and her elder sister Marie at the Ionides house and asked her to sit; the sittings ran twice a week through the winter of 1863 to 1864. Sources give her birth as either 1845 or 1846 and she died in 1884. **Did Christine Spartali's father really refuse the painting?** That is what the only account says. The Pennells, writing in 1908 and reporting the recollection of her sister Marie, say the two girls wanted their father to buy it but that Mr Spartali did not like it and objected to it as a portrait of his daughter. No contemporary document records the offer, and every later version of the story descends from that passage. What is independently documented is that Michael Spartali refused pictures by other artists too, having taken only two of four still lifes he commissioned from Fantin-Latour in 1866. **How much did Whistler get for the painting?** A hundred pounds, on the account of his biographers, from the sale Rossetti arranged after the family declined it. Whistler himself, writing in 1892, said he received a hundred pounds and then added that he believed it was fifty and could not remember. No sum is recorded for the offer made to her father. The picture made 420 guineas at Christie's in May 1892 and Charles Lang Freer bought it in August 1903 for 3,750 pounds. **What happened to Christine Spartali?** She married Comte Edouard Cahen d'Anvers in 1868 or 1869, had two sons, lived in Rome and died on 27 September 1884 in the Tyrol at the age of thirty-eight. She was buried in the Hellenic enclosure at West Norwood Cemetery. That date rests on one genealogical compilation, which itself offers 22 September as an alternative and asks whether it was Germany. The cause is not settled either: accounts variously describe a severe depression and the treatments of the era, an overdose of chloral, a possible suicide and a contemporary rumour of death in childbirth. **Did she ever say what she thought of the picture?** There is no record of it. The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler indexes her with five documents and all five were written by other people, and searches on her married name return nothing. She was alive while the painting was exhibited in London in 1872 and hung in the Peacock Room from 1877, so the opportunity existed, but no source says whether she saw it again or what she made of it. ## Sources - [1] Elizabeth Robins Pennell and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, volume 1, 1908, pages 121 to 127, read in full text. The single root of the refusal story, reporting Marie Spartali Stillman's recollection: the meeting at the Ionides house, the sittings twice a week through the winter of 1863 to 1864, the robe and screen ready on the first day, the half-closed shutters, the dashing at the canvas, the lunches of roast pheasant, raw tomatoes and canned apricots, the sitter kept standing and never let to rest, the father's refusal, the hundred pounds Whistler agreed to take through Rossetti, the collector who would have bought it had the signature been changed, and the lost pencil drawing of her head. - [2] University of Glasgow, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, catalogue raisonne YMSM 050, History, Subject and Technical description tabs. Used for the sale at Christie's on 28 May 1892 as lot 39 at 420 guineas to Alexander Reid, the purchase by Charles Lang Freer in August 1903 at 3,750 pounds, the day of the month coming from the Freer's own record at source 6, the sitter's dates as 1846 to 1884, the hedged suggestion of a substitute model and the fact that the catalogue records the signature without giving its position. Note that the same site prints both Edouard and Edmond for the husband's name on a single page. - [3] The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler, University of Glasgow, document 08040, Whistler to Henri Fantin-Latour, February or March 1865, with the editors' translation. The one contemporary document touching the sittings: the Japanese woman taking him from morning to evening, and the picture set aside until then because of the model's illness. - [4] The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler, documents 01083 and 01086, Fantin-Latour to Whistler, 12 February 1867 and 16 November 1868, with the editors' notes citing Druick and Hoog, Fantin-Latour, Paris 1982. Used for Michael Spartali commissioning four still lifes in 1866 and paying for only two, and for Fantin's question in 1868 asking whether another buyer was like Spartali, a collector who does not like them. - [5] The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler, document 07450, Whistler's draft letter to an editor, June 1892, in which he says he received one hundred pounds for the picture and then says he believes it was fifty and cannot remember; and document 08216, Whistler to D. C. Thomson, 14 February 1892, naming the portrait of Miss Spartali in Japanese dress as the only picture of his in the Leyland collection that he cared for. - [6] Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Asian Art, object record F1903.91a-b, The Princess from the Land of Porcelain, read in a browser after direct fetches were refused. Used for the signature recorded at the upper left corner, for the label describing western models in Asian dress with objects from Whistler's own collections and for the provenance running from Rossetti's studio through an unidentified collector to Leyland from at least 1872, citing curatorial remarks by Susan Hobbs and Lee Glazer. - [7] Aileen Tsui, 'Whistler's La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine: Painting Re-Oriented', Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 9, no. 2, Autumn 2010, text and notes. Used for the description of the signature in large letters in the upper section of the canvas, for Whistler's failure to persuade Michael Spartali to buy the portrait of his daughter and for Ford Madox Brown's 1888 list naming a portrait of the Countess de Cahen in Japanese costume. - [8] Alice S. Lege, 'The Cahen d'Anvers in France and Italy', Jewish Country Houses project, University of Oxford, and the INHA Agorha database entry for Hugo Cahen d'Anvers built on the same research. Used for the husband as Edouard Joseph Cahen d'Anvers, 1832 to 1894, for the hereditary marquisate of Torre Alfina conferred by royal decree in 1885, for the two sons Rodolfo and Ugo and for the account of Christine Spartali's severe depression and the treatments of the era including morphine and chloral hydrate. - [9] National Portrait Gallery, London, person record for Christina Spartali and the portrait records NPG x18050, an albumen cabinet card by Julia Margaret Cameron of March 1868, and NPG x203308, an albumen carte de visite by Philip Crellin junior of the 1860s. Read in a browser after direct fetches were refused. Used for the two surviving photographs of her and for the gallery's dating of her birth to 1845, against 1846 elsewhere. - [10] Christopher A. Long, Anglo-Greek genealogy, family group sheets for Michael Spartali and Euphrosyne Varsamis and for Comte Edouard Cahen d'Anvers and Christina Spartali, with the West Norwood Hellenic enclosure burials index. Used for the birth on 19 May 1846 and the baptism of 23 June 1846, for the death on 27 September 1884 in the Tyrol with the alternatives the compiler himself offers, for the burial on 9 October 1884 and for the family's residence at The Shrubbery. A genealogical compilation rather than a scholarly edition, and cited as such. - [11] Elizabeth Robins Pennell and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, volume 2, 1908, page 127, for the report that the 420 guineas of 1892 was four times what Whistler had been paid and for the statement that Freer paid five thousand guineas, which conflicts with the 3,750 pounds in the catalogue raisonne. Cited separately because the catalogue's own note places this passage in volume 1, where it does not appear. - [12] Kirsty Stonell Walker, 'Sunday 16th December: Christine Spartali', The Kissed Mouth, 16 December 2018. A blog post, graded as such, reporting David B. Elliott's biography of the Stillmans, which we have not read. The only route we found to the accounts of an overdose of chloral discreetly covered up, of William Michael Rossetti calling the death cataleptical and of a contemporary rumour of death in childbirth.