Thomas Jeckyll trained as an architect and was active, both as an architect and designer, in London and Norfolk. In the 1860s he came into contact with James Abbot McNeil Whistler (1834-1903) and E. W. Godwin (1833-1886). By the 1870s, Jeckyll was one of the leading architects of the Aesthetic Movement. He designed an interior for the Holland Park house of the collector, Alexander Ionides (1833-1900) (who bequeathed much of his collection of paintings to the V&A) and the dining room of a house in Princes Gate. (Due to its later painted decoration by Whistler, this room became known as the Peacock Room, and is currently on display in the Freer Art Gallery, Washington, D.C.) Jeckyll became mentally unstable in 1877 and died in an asylum in 1881.

The Aesthetic or Art Movement was triggered by the display of Japanese decorative art at the London International Exhibition of 1862. Strongly influenced by Japanese design, the Aesthetic Movement was a reaction to the Gothic revival of the mid-19th century. In the new movement, the pursuit of 'art for art's sake' became a justifiable goal in itself. The Aesthetic Movement was established when the magazine Punch paid it the tribute of making a mockery of it.