The Princess from the Land of Porcelain

The Princess from the Land of Porcelain, painted by James McNeill Whistler between 1863 and 1865, shows a full-length woman in a Japanese-style robe, worn in a Western manner as a fine dressing gown, surrounded by Asian objects: a rug, a Japanese screen and a porcelain vase. She holds a fan and gazes outward with a wistful expression. The model was Christine Spartali, sister of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Marie Spartali Stillman. It is one of several Whistler works of these years showing a Western woman dressed and set in an Asian manner, reflecting the Anglo-Japanese taste of the period. The picture passed through a series of buyers and resales before reaching the shipping magnate Frederick Richards Leyland, for whom Whistler redesigned the dining room that became The Peacock Room. It is now held at the Freer Gallery in Washington. Critics of its day were divided: one reviewer of the 1865 Paris Salon dismissed it as little more than a caprice, while later scholars have noted the influence of Kitagawa Utamaro and French eighteenth-century chinoiserie.

Painter

James McNeill Whistler

Date

1864

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

202 × 116 cm

Museum

Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Genre

portrait

Depicts

oriental rug, Christina Spartali, sash, vase, hand fan, robe, woman, kimono

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