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When the portrait was completed, Spartali's father refused to purchase it; Whistler's large signature at the top led another would-be buyer to withdraw. This may have led Whistler to develop his later butterfly-style signature.The early history of the painting afterwards is fairly uncertain. In 1865 Princess was displayed at the Paris Salon. The following year, it was displayed at Gambart's French Gallery in London; when the exhibition finished, his friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti received the painting as Whistler was in South America at the time. It was then sold by either Rossetti or Joanna Hiffernan, Whistler's muse and lover, to an  art collector thought to be Frederick Huth. Princess was returned to Whistler in 1867.Several years later, the portrait was bought by Leyland He displayed Princess in a dining room filled with Kangxi ceramics, but was displeased how it had been decorated by a previous artist, Thomas Jeckyll. Whistler suggested that Leyland modify the coloring of the room to better accent his new acquisition; the redesign was later handled by Whistler himself, as Jeckyll was ill. The result was The Peacock Room. However, Whistler's modifications were more in-depth than those wished for by Leyland, resulting in a quarrel between the two.In 1892, after Leyland's death, Princess was sold at Christie's in London to Alexander Reid for 420 guineas. Reid was a Glasgow art dealer who sold it to William Burrell a few years later.Princess was acquired by Charles Lang Freer on August 20, 1903, under the title The Princess of Porcelain for £3,750 (US$18,240) on Bond Street, in London. He kept it in his home in Detroit, Michigan; the following year he acquired The Peacock Room. In 1906 he donated both to the Smithsonian.
After Freer's death in 1919, both Princess and The Peacock Room were moved to the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., a Smithsonian museum established by Freer. Princess continues to be housed in The Peacock Room at the Freer Gallery, shown hung above the fireplace amidst a rotating stock of Asian ceramics. In 2011, the Princess was digitized with over one gigapixel of resolution by the Google Art Project; this was achieved by assembling numerous smaller digital mosaics.
Smithsonian Bond Street Detroit Dante Gabriel Rossetti Freer Gallery of Art The Peacock Room gigapixel Paris Salon Washington, D.C. William Burrell Kangxi ceramics Gambart Alexander Reid Google Art Project Christie's Joanna Hiffernan digital mosaics Frederick Huth resolution muse Charles Lang Freer Thomas Jeckyll Michigan