the peacock

The Peacock Room was originally designed to serve as the dining room in the townhouse located at in the neighbourhood of Kensington in London, and owned by the British shipping magnate Frederick Richards Leyland. Leyland engaged the British architect Richard Norman Shaw to remodel and redecorate his home. Shaw entrusted the remodelling of the dining room to Thomas Jeckyll, another British architect experienced in the Anglo-Japanese style. At one point, Whistler gained access to Leyland's home and painted two fighting peacocks meant to represent the artist and his patron, which he titled Art and Money: or, The Story of the Room. He referenced the incident again in his book, The Gentle Art of…