Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The Princess and the Peacocks

Linda Merril and Sarah Ridley 1993
illustrated by Tennessee Dixon

This book is for a new PenPal who loves peacocks.  It's about the artist Whistler (who I admit I don't know much about- aside from the famous White Girl and Whistler's Mother). 

It's a true story about when Whistler was commissioned by his patron Frederick Leyland to paint a room in his house.  Apparently he went over the top and created an outrageous masterpiece which caused a quarrel between the two men.  (He painted over very expensive leather walls).  Whistler sounds like quite a character- hosting parties in the room while Leyland was away, and pretty  much doing what he wanted and disregarding Leyland's wishes.  The whole story and some additional pictures are here.





 

Madeleine really liked that the last page in the book has photographs of what the room looked like.

1 comment:

  1. How lovely! I'll be looking for this at the library today! Writing you a letter this week as well! :)

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