Figure of a cat

In nineteenth-century Japan, the cat was an occasional companion of courtesans and, in art, suggestive of willfulness, stealth, and eroticism. In the Peacock Room, Freer placed this figure on the mantel alongside a number of earth-toned tea bowls and beneath Whistler's La Princesse du pays de la porcelain, which depicts the Anglo-Greek beauty Christina Spartali in Japanese robes, surrounded by a variety of decorative objects from China and Japan.