Collection Highlights: American Art

James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834-1903)
United States, 1864-1870; additions 1870-1879
Oil on wood panel
H: 61.4 W: 48.8 cm
Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1892.23a-b

The Balcony originally had a more elaborate frame decorated with Japanese motifs, probably resembling the one on Caprice in Purple and Gold: The Golden Screen (see F1904.75a). Whistler himself replaced it with the present frame in 1892. By then, he had come to prefer this simple reeded design, now universally known as a "Whistler frame," which appears on most of the Whistler paintings in the Freer collection.

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856-1925)
United States, 1910
Oil on canvas
H: 51.5 W: 71.0 cm
Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1917.182a-b

In 1894, Charles Lang Freer went to Italy to visit the villas and gardens recommended by Charles Adams Platt, the architect who later designed the Freer Gallery of Art. The trip strengthened Freer's admiration for Italian Renaissance architecture and may have influenced his decision to buy this painting in 1917. Breakfast in the Loggiarepresents a Florentine villa on a bright autumn morning. A marble statue of Venus, the embodiment of beauty, presides over the women dining in the sun-dappled arcade, which resembles the loggia of the Freer Gallery courtyard.

Thomas Wilmer Dewing (American, 1851-1938)
United States, 1896-1897
Oil on wood panel
H: 175.7 W: 153.0 cm
Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1906.72

James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834-1903)
United States, 1876-1877
Oil paint and gold leaf on canvas, leather, and wood
H: 421.6 W: 613.4 D: 1026.2 cm
Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1904.61

The Peacock Room was originally the dining room in the London home of Frederick Richards Leyland (1831–1892), a wealthy shipowner from Liverpool, England, who was James McNeill Whistler's leading patron. The architect Thomas Jeckyll (1827–1881) designed the room, constructing an intricate lattice of shelving to contain Leyland's collection of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain, mostly from the Kangxi era (1662–1722) of the Qing dynasty. Antique Dutch gilt leather hung on the walls and a painting by Whistler, The Princess from the Land of Porcelain, was given the place of honor above the fireplace (see F1903.91a-b).

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