The Peacock Room

The Peacock Room is a historic room inside the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., decorated with painted walls, shelving, and furnishings in the Anglo-Japanese style. The dark blue-green wall surfaces are painted with golden peacock motifs, while built-in wooden shelving along the walls displays Chinese porcelain that was originally part of the interior.

James McNeill Whistler redesigned this dining room between 1876 and 1877 at Frederick Leyland's London townhouse, painting over the original work by Thomas Jeckyll. Charles Lang Freer acquired the room in 1904 and had it moved to his house in Detroit before it came to Washington in 1923 alongside Freer's art collection.

The room takes its name from the two golden peacocks visible on the shutters and walls, spreading their tail feathers like fans. The wall paintings show peacocks in poses expressing dominance and territorial behavior, while Chinese porcelain on the shelves reflects the period's interest in East Asian art.

This room is located on the ground floor of the Freer Gallery and can be visited during the museum's regular opening hours, with no admission charge. Visitors can view the room through glass panels that protect the historic interior, and seating across from it allows for longer observation.

Whistler originally charged Leyland around 2,000 pounds for restoration work, then repainted the entire room without permission and billed double. The confrontation between the two led Whistler to paint the two fighting peacocks, whose feathers are decorated with silver coins to represent his view of Leyland as money-obsessed.