From the day it opened in 1923, the Freer Gallery has been one of the more unusual Smithsonian museums. Put together and paid for by railroad millionaire Charles Freer, it revolves around more than one thousand prints, drawings and paintings by London-based American artist James McNeil Whistler - the largest collection of his works anywhere. The collection also includes Chinese jades and bronzes, Byzantine illuminated manuscripts, Buddhist wall sculptures and pieces of Persian metalwork, all collected by Freer under Whistler's tutelage. Among other works are pieces by Whistler's contemporaries Winslow Homer, Albert Pinkham Ryder and John Singer Sargent.
In addition to his portraits and landscapes, Whistler is represented by an entire room - the Peacock Room . Its original owner commissioned Whistler to execute a painting for the mantelpiece; the artist later covered the walls and furnishings with blue and gold painted peacock feathers. His patron hated it, so Freer bought it and shipped it over from London (he also kept live peacocks in the museum's central courtyard).
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