This week in the New Yorker magazine, Peter Schjeldahl writes about the Peacock Room, a dining room decorated by James McNeill Whistler for his patron Frederick Leyland in 1876-77. When the men came to a disagreement over the job’s worth, Schjeldahl writes, Whistler—a “bad-boy darling of high society”—painted a satirical mural representing the men as warring peacocks. “The Leyland bird is pompous and hectoring, with a breast of gold and platinum coins, windmilling wings, and an immense explosion of tail feathers; the Whistler bird poignantly droops, raising one wing in feeble defense,” he writes. The room has recently been reinstalled in the Freer Gallery, in Washington, D.C.; here Schjeldahl discusses the effectiveness of its design.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/multimedia/2011/04/18/110418_audioslideshow_peacock-room#ixzz1JshpXTgZ
