In a diary of William Michael Rossetti, the ever busy biographers have found a note referring to six schemes or projects of practically the same size. It reads: "Whistler is doing on a large scale, for Leyland, the subject of women with flowers." They were never executed, although some of the sketches are still in existence. He abandoned decorative schemes entirely in later years, but became more and more engrossed in the problems of interior decoration. In later years he intended to paint a grand decoration with full orchestration that he would call "The Symphony of Colours--Full Palette." This would have been indeed interesting, but I fear he went too deep into blacks to have accomplished it. In most instances he abstained from mural decoration,--the panels over the chimney-place, and the shutter and ceiling decoration of the Peacock Room for the Leyland home at Prince's Gate, London, were his only supreme effort in that direction. They show the right idea about decorative painting. He agreed with all decorative painters from Gozzoli to Bob Chanler, that it should be an arrangement of colours which, within its frame, affords a pleasant visual entertainment.
There is no intention to give food for thought. The peacocks in blue on gold and gold on blue relate as little as does an Oriental carpet. He merely wished to please the eye by depicting them more beautifully than they were in nature. But why did he select peacocks? Do they not convey an idea? Figures usually are story-telling symbols, but not necessarily so; with him they were vehicles of colour, to invent a pattern for their luminosity. Peacock designs occur frequently in Japanese art. No doubt, Whistler studied them. There is a certain resemblance, but he individualized them in his own way. The sharply silhouetted forms of the birds are a happy invention of luminous colour and interesting design. The Japanese would have made a more lavish use of gold, that is they would have left larger spaces untouched by any additional colour. Blank spaces of gold (or any colour) act in such instances like the musical silence of a pause between music, they represent the birth of beauty from luxury. But the Leyland room was overcrowded, with its elaborate ceiling, bulky chandelier and collection of blue and white porcelain on walnut shelves, broken by an endless repetition of perpendicular lines. He could not change the architecture of the place, so he went to work and decorated the few spaces that were available. To decorate the inside shutters with a peacock design was a unique performance, and to cover the moulding of the chandelier and the entire ceiling with conventionalized peacock feathers, utilizing the eyes of the feathers as accents, was even more marvellous. In the elegance of its scheme, and its individual perfection, splendour and restfulness it has no equal.