Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room (better known as The Peacock Room) is a work of interior decorative art created by James McNeill Whistler and Thomas Jeckyll, translocated to the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which is part of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art. Whistler painted the paneled room in a unified palette of blue-greens with over-glazing and metallic gold leaf. Painted between 1876 and 1877, it now is considered one of the greatest surviving Aesthetic interiors, and best examples of the Anglo-Japanese style.
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Peacock Room in the context of Aesthetic Movement
Aestheticism (also known as the aesthetic movement) was an art movement in the late 19th century that valued the appearance of literature, music, fonts, and the arts over their functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be produced to be beautiful, rather than to teach a lesson, create a parallel, or perform another didactic purpose, a sentiment expressed in the slogan "art for art's sake." Aestheticism flourished, in the 1870s and 1880s, gaining prominence and the support of notable writers, such as Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde.
Aestheticism challenged the values of mainstream Victorian culture, as many Victorians believed that literature and art fulfilled important ethical roles. Writing in The Guardian, Fiona McCarthy states that "the aesthetic movement stood, in stark and sometimes shocking contrast, to the crass materialism of Britain, in the 19th century."