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 Making Enemies. Adding to the emotional drama was Whistler's fondness for Leyland's wife, Frances, who separated from her husband in 1879. Another result of this drama was Jeckyll who, so shocked by the first sight of
his room, returned home and was later found on the floor of his studio covered in gold leaf; he never recovered and died insane three years later. Having acquired
The Princess from the Land of Porcelain, American industrialist and art collector
Charles Lang Freer anonymously purchased the entire room in 1904 from Leyland's heirs, including Leyland's daughter and her husband, the British artist
Val Prinsep. Freer then had the contents of the
Peacock Room installed in
his Detroit mansion. it also underwent extensive restoration in 2022. ==Legacy==