The gold scab: eruption in frilthy lucre
Whistler, James McNeill (1834-1903)
Additional titles
The creditor
- Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
[Museum inv. no.: 1977.11]
Item location
Description
Whistler calls upon his cutting wit to caricature his patron Frederick R. Leyland (1831–1892), a British shipping magnate. In 1876, Whistler transformed the dining room of Leyland’s London townhouse into Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room, creating one of the most splendid and original 19th-century interiors. Now heralded as the epitome of Aesthetic interior design, Whistler’s reworking of Frederick Leyland’s dining room devastated Thomas Jeckyll, the room’s original designer, and infuriated Leyland, who refused to pay Whistler the full fee as originally agreed. The Gold Scab depicts Leyland as a hideous peacock, sitting upon Whistler’s house as if it were an obscene egg. Using the same colors featured in the disputed Peacock Room, the artist caricatures Leyland’s miserliness, piano skills, and habit of wearing frilled shirts (hence the title, “Frilthy Lucre”). Whistler’s butterfly monogram bears a barbed tail poised to strike at Leyland’s neck. (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco)Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)
Pianoforte [2299]Musical works
Schubert, Franz -- Moment Musical no. 3 in F minor, op. 94 legible music notationThe frame currently on this artwork contains a quotation from Franz Schubert's Moment Musical no. 3.
RIdIM images
Image from www.famsf.org
Image URLs
image link 1Bibliographic references
Teniswood-Harvey, Arabella. Colour-music: Musical modelling in James McNeill Whistler's art (Ph.D. diss., University of Tasmania, 2006).Teniswood-Harvey, Arabella. "Music in colour: Whistler’s six projects and Schubert’s Moments musicaux, op. 94", The British art journal: The research journal of British art studies XV/1 (2014) 27-34. ISSN 1467-2006.