The Princess from the Land of Porcelain

Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain
Artist	James McNeill Whistler
Year	1865 (1865)
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	201.5 cm× 116.1 cm(79.3 in× 45.7 in)
Location	Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Accession	F1903.91a-b

Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain (better known as The Princess from the Land of Porcelain; also known by the French title La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine) is a painting by American-born artist James McNeill Whistler. It was painted between 1863 and 1865. The painting currently hangs above the fireplace in The Peacock Room at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Description

Princess depicts a European woman wearing a kimono worn in a Western manner, standing amidst numerous Asian art objects, ^[1] including a rug, Japanese folding screen and a large decorative porcelain vase. ^[2] She holds a hand fan and looks ahead "wistfully". ^[3] The entirety is rendered in an impressionistic manner. ^[2] The painting‘s frame is decorated with a similar motif to the painting, with interlocking circles and numerous rectangles. ^[4]

At the time Whistler painted Princess, he often used large amounts of gold in his work, such as in his similarly themed Caprice in Purple and Gold No.2: The Gold Screen. Although the painting itself does not include gold or gold pigments, its yellow and ochre shades complement the gold and blue interior of its original setting while displayed at the home of British shipping magnate Frederick Leyland. ^[5]

Production

Sketch by Whistler, showing flowers which were later removed

Princess was painted between 1863 and 1865 by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, with Christine Spartali, the sister of Pre-Raphaelite artist Marie Spartali Stillman, serving as the model; ^[1] Owen Edwards of Smithsonian Magazine describes Spartali as "an Anglo-Greek beauty whom all the artists of the day were clamoring to paint". ^[6] Princess is one of several of Whistler's works painted during this period that depict a Western woman in Asian-styled surroundings and Asian-styled costume, a reflection of the current Anglo-Japanese trend and Art Nouveau aesthetic. ^[7] Like in several other of his works, Whistler used sketches to prepare the general layout of the work. Other details were added in later. A surviving sketch depicts flowers, which were later eliminated from the work. ^[1] The white Japanese folding screen in the background may have been one owned by Whistler. ^[8]

History

When the portrait was completed, Spartali's father refused to purchase it; Whistler's large signature at the top led another would-be buyer to withdraw. This may have led Whistler to develop his later butterfly-style signature. ^[1]

The early history of the painting afterwards is fairly uncertain. In 1865 Princess was displayed at the Paris Salon. The following year, it was displayed at Gambart's French Gallery in London; when the exhibition finished, his friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti received the painting as Whistler was in South America at the time. It was then sold by either Rossetti or Joanna Hiffernan, Whistler's muse and lover, to an art collector thought to be Frederick Huth. Princess was returned to Whistler in 1867. ^[7]

Several years later, the portrait was bought by Leyland ^[7] He displayed Princess in a dining room filled with Kangxi ceramics, but was displeased how it had been decorated by a previous artist, Thomas Jeckyll. ^[9] Whistler suggested that Leyland modify the coloring of the room to better accent his new acquisition; the redesign was later handled by Whistler himself, as Jeckyll was ill. ^{[7] [6]} The result was The Peacock Room . ^[7] However, Whistler's modifications were more in-depth than those wished for by Leyland, resulting in a quarrel between the two. ^[9]

In 1892, after Leyland's death, Princess was sold at Christie's in London to Alexander Reid for 420 guineas. Reid was a Glasgow art dealer who sold it to William Burrell a few years later. ^{[7] [9]}

Princess was acquired by Charles Lang Freer on August 20, 1903, under the title The Princess of Porcelain for £3,750 (US$18,240) ^[7] on Bond Street, in London. ^[3] He kept it in his home in Detroit, Michigan; the following year he acquired The Peacock Room. In 1906 he donated both to the Smithsonian. ^[6]

Princess, hanging over the fireplace in The Peacock Room at the Freer Gallery of Art

After Freer's death in 1919, both Princess and The Peacock Room were moved to the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., a Smithsonian museum established by Freer. ^{[1] [9]} Princess continues to be housed in The Peacock Room at the Freer Gallery, shown hung above the fireplace amidst a rotating stock of Asian ceramics. ^{[7] [9]} In 2011, the Princess was digitized with over one gigapixel of resolution by the Google Art Project; ^[10] this was achieved by assembling numerous smaller digital mosaics. ^[11]

Influences

Critics have seen influences of Japanese woodblock maker Kitagawa Utamaro in the painting, as well as 18th-century French chinoiserie stylings. ^[1]

Reception

In a review for the 1865 Paris Salon, Gustave Vattier wrote that the painting was not ready for display, saying that "a child's breath could blow it over"; ^{[lower-alpha 1]} he also disagreed with the belief that Whistler was representing reality, writing that the painting was nothing but "whim and fantasy". ^{[lower-alpha 2] [12]}

In her doctoral dissertation, Caroline Doswell Older wrote that, when viewed without its frame, Princess came across as a being like a closely cropped, carelessly taken photograph which seems as if it would be swallowed up by The Peacock Room. However, with its frame, she finds it an "aesthetic object with enough presence to hold its own" in the heavily decorated room. ^[13]

Notes

1. Original: "... un soufle[ sic ] d'enfant la renverserait."
2. Original: "... que du caprice et de la fantaisie."

References

Footnotes

1. Freer Gallery of Art, The Princess.
2. Older 2007, p. 35.
3. Goswamy 2011, The Peacock Room.
4. Older 2007, p. 36.
5. Okamoto-MacPhall 2005, p. 91.
6. Edwards 2011, The Story Behind.
7. Google Art Project, The Princess.
8. Okamoto-MacPhall 2005, p. 90.
9. Freer Gallery of Art, Whistler's Peacock Room.
10. The Telegraph 2011, Google Art Project.
11. Kennicott 2011, Google Art Project.
12. Vattier 1865, p. 33.
13. Older 2007, pp. 35–36.

Bibliography

• Edwards, Owen (June 2011). "The Story Behind the Peacock Room's Princess". Smithsonian. Archived from the original on 10 May 2012. Retrieved 9 March 2012.
• "Google Art Project: the 7 billion pixel masterpieces". The Telegraph. 1 February 2011. Archived from the original on 10 March 2011. Retrieved 9 March 2012.
• Goswamy, B. N. (13 November 2011). "The Peacock Room". The Tribune. Archived from the original on 15 November 2011. Retrieved 9 March 2012.
• Kennicott, Philip (1 February 2011). "Google Art Project: 'Street view' technology added to museums". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 15 October 2012. Retrieved 9 March 2012.
• Older, Caroline Doswell (2007). American Artists' Frames : Paintings, Environments, and Viewers, 1860–1920 (Doctoral). University of California, Santa Barbara.
• Okamoto-MacPhall, Aiko (2005). "Japonism in Art: The Case of James McNeil Whistler". In Chen, Eugene (ed.). Intercultural Exploration. New York: Rodopi. ISBN   978-90-420-1636-1.
• "The Princess from the Land of Porcelain". Freer Gallery of Art. Archived from the original on 4 April 2012. Retrieved 9 March 2012.
• "The Princess from the Land of Porcelain". Google Art Project. Archived from the original on 2 March 2012. Retrieved 9 March 2012.
• "Whistler's Peacock Room" (PDF). Freer Gallery of Art. Archived (PDF) from the original on 15 March 2012. Retrieved 9 March 2012.
• Vattier, Gustave (1865). Le Salon de 1865 [The Salon of 1865] (in French). Paris.