L a princesse du pays de la 
PORCELAINE,” swaying like a 
* flower in her Japanese dra¬ 
peries, though not at all like a flower 
of Japan, is the focus of interest 
in the Peacock Room which, in its turn, 
is the focus of interest in the Whistler 
division of the Freer Collection. It was 
Mr. Freer’s fortune, capped by his judg¬ 
ment, to preserve for the American pub¬ 
lic not only portraits, nocturnes, pastels, 
prints, in which Whistler’s genius is 
shown with wide range, but the one work 
in which he may be known by later gen¬ 
erations as the master of* decoration his 
contemporaries knew him to be. 
The Peacock Room is not the only ex¬ 
ample of his skill in surrounding art 
with art. There were the galleries in 
which his exhibitions were held, the white 
and yellow gallery for the Venetian etch¬ 
ings, the rose and white for his water- 
colors, the unfinished decoration for the 
exhibition of the British artists, of which 
the British artist would have none; 
there were the rooms in his own houses, 
the blue dining room in Tite Street, with 
its flutter of purple fans and its bowl of 
goldfish, the blue and white dining room 
of Cheyne Walk, the gray and black 
studio in which his mother’s portrait was 
painted; there were the rooms in the 
houses of his friends, for which he de¬ 
signed the color schemes, mixing the 
color himself and leaving the house 
panters only the task of applying it. 
These live in the Pennells’ “ Life,” and 
liv j charmingly, but the reader is obliged 
to mix the colors in his mind, and may 
come far enough fxom the Whistler real¬ 
ity. The Peacock Room is just that—the 
Whistler reality in decoration. 
No other room, of course, was ever 
like it, and there never again can be such 
a room, which is the most important les¬ 
son it teaches, that a work of decorative 
art, as any other work of art, is just as 
impossible as a living creature to repeat. 
Students should visit the Peacock Room, 
however, not to try to find out how to 
reproduce it, but to see how one scrupu¬ 
lous and devoted artist framed his pict¬ 
ure. 
The picture was “ La Princesse,” 
painted in 1864, from Christine Spartali, 
a young Greek girl, and the sister of the 
Marie Spartali who posed for Rossetti’s 
“ Fiammetta.” The color scheme was in¬ 
spired by the Japanese robe and screen 
belonging to Whistler, and the exotic 
beauty of the model fitted into it with 
exquisite justness of relation. The gen¬ 
eral tone was blonde and delicately gay, 
with warmth suffusing it as though it 
lay perpetually under sunlight. 
This picture presently^ passed into the 
L 
