One of the first museums on the Mall in Washington, D. C. was built at the insistence of an obsessed art collector from Detroit, Michigan who gave the United States his art and funds for a building to house them. The Freer Gallery of Art founded by Charles Lang Freer, is part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Freer didn’t start collecting art until he retired at the age of 45 after a meteoric rise as the partner in a railroad car manufacturer. He turned his attention to art with the same devotion he had once lavished on business. His passion and deep pockets attracted the attention of America’s most famous artist, James McNeill Whistler, who set Freer on a course that would change the world’s understanding of art.
Freer established an agreement with Whistler that gave him an option to buy all the works in the artist’s studio in return for establishing a collection in Washington, D. C.
As their relationship developed, Whistler taught Freer how to look at works of art and told him that there were works of art in Asia that Westerners had never seen. On Whistler’s instigation, Freer went to Asia four times, beginning in 1894 and traveled to places that most Westerners never went.
Working with the Friends of the Freer House in Detroit, and a number of former curators from the Freer Gallery, as well as the current curator, we’ll tell this remarkable story. We’ll retrace Freer’s steps of discovery and find out what a Herculean task it was to assemble works of art in cultures virtually unknown to Americans. As he traveled and collected, it became clear that his years in the railroad business had prepared this rather slight and delicate man for the rigors of the international art trade.
His toughness, practicality and pragmatism enabled him to win over Chinese warlords as he and his small retinue traveled deep into uncharted lands tracking down masterpieces that he had only heard of through rumor and innuendo. He wasn’t the only one who had believed the East was a treasure chest of art. Wilhem Boto from the Kaiser Frederick Museum was hot on his trail.
More often than not, Freer beat Boto and brought back his finds to his home in Detroit which he was turning into his first gallery. One of his friends, Mary Chase Perry, a ceramicist ignited his passion for beautiful surfaces and he was off again. This time to Egypt and the Middle East to find Raca and various potteries that would have an affinity for his evolving home.
In 1890, Freer contracted with Wilson Eyre to design a home in Detroit. The house reflected his involvement with contemporary architects and artists who were commissioned to create paintings for each room to help him turn it into a work of art itself. He wanted every element of the house to contribute to the general harmony. He tapped two American Impressionist Thomas Dewing and Dwight Tryon to create the paintings and to embellish the rooms in a way that would enhance their paintings. This included choosing specials surfaces for the walls that shimmered like the canvases. Each painting was placed so it would receive the proper amount of sunlight to bring out the artist’s intentions.
People who visited the house said it was a dream of beauty inside and out. When you walked into the parlor where Dewing’s works were hung it would be almost like walking into a Dewing painting. The walls shimmered with an opalescent quality which had been specially applied to the walls to reverberate and echo and have a resonance with the paintings.
Freer also collected works by a number of other Nineteenth Century American masters, including paintings by Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Childe Hassam, and John Twachtman.
His home was an amazing collaboration of artists, architects and a patron. In the upstairs gallery, Freer would have daily viewings for his guests. He made a ceremony out of looking at these works of art. You didn't just plop down and look at a Kokomo or a Whistler. Steven Waring, his very meticulous butler would bring in refreshments, whether it was champagne or a special blend of tea. And then, after everyone was suitably comfortably seated, at a particular time of day, when the setting sun cast just the right glow on the wall, Waring would bring in a beautiful Whistler nocturne, and you would watch it as the sun set, as the glow disappeared from the painting. It was much more than a gallery. It was a setting for an almost metaphysical aesthetic experience.
We’ll discover the most popular exhibit in the Freer Gallery has a storied history. In 1904, Frederick Leyland's widow sold Freer the Peacock Room, designed by James Whistler, and Freer had Eyre design another room in the carriage house in which to install it. Many consider The Peacock Room to be Whistler's masterpiece of interior decorative mural art. He painted the paneled room in a rich and unified palette of brilliant blue-greens with over-glazing and metallic gold leaf. Painted in 1876-1877, it is now considered a high example of the Anglo-Japanese style.
Unhappy with the first decorative result by another artist, Leyland left the room in Whistler’s care to make minor changes, “to harmonize” the room whose primary purpose was to display Leyland’s china collection. However, Whistler let his imagination run wild, “Well, you know, I just painted on. I went on—without design or sketch—putting in every touch with such freedom…And the harmony in blue and gold developing, you know, I forgot everything in my joy of it.”
Upon returning, Leyland was shocked by the “improvements.” Artist and patron quarreled so violently over the room and the proper compensation for the work that the important relationship for Whistler was terminated. At one point, Whistler gained access to Leyland's home and painted two fighting peacocks meant to represent the artist and his patron; one holds a paintbrush and the other holds a bag of money.
Whistler is reported to have said to Leyland, “Ah, I have made you famous. My work will live when you are forgotten. Still, perchance, in the dim ages to come you will be remembered as the proprietor of the Peacock Room.” Adding to the emotional drama was Whistler’s fondness for Leyland’s wife, Frances, who separated from her husband in 1879.
Freer eventually acquired the Peacock room from another owner and had it crated and shipped to his Detroit home where it was installed in his converted carriage house. After the museum was built it ended up in the Freer Gallery where it has delighted visitors ever since.
While Whistler was a friend he strung Freer along for the longest time until Whistler died in 1903. Ever the businessman Freer was eager to close the deal. Whistler remained aloof. Freer hovered very close. Every year, and even in letters, he'd say, "I have to go to London again to see Whistler." He was making sure that he would get that material. And basically it's established that he will get the Whistler collection in exchange for making sure that it's placed in the nation’s capitol and that he will found a museum for the collection to be showcased and attract the tourists and the crowds that Whistler knew would come to the capitol of the country where he was born.
The director of the Smithsonian, Samuel P. Langley, who may have been afraid of the cost of upkeep of such a bequest, repeatedly turned down the idea. Freer persevered, contacting President Theodore Roosevelt (and commissioning Gari Melchers to paint a portrait of Roosevelt), and later his wife Edith. Edith prevailed on Roosevelt to back the project, and Roosevelt essentially directed the Smithsonian to accept Freer's gift.
In 1916, construction began on what is now known as the Freer Gallery in Washington. The building cost one million dollars, all of which was paid by Freer. Completion was delayed by World War I and the gallery was not opened until 1923.
Freer died in 1919, and didn’t live to see the Museum that bears his name open but he had amassed what may have been the largest private art collection in the country, including over 30,000 pieces, that left a legacy built on his quest to preserve one of America’s greatest artists and to create an understanding of Asia in the West.
Our goal is to continue this journey of discovery and cross-cultural understanding.
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