 Good evening and thank you all for coming. I'm Karen McCarty, Territorial Director of Cooper Humus, and I'm delighted to welcome all of you here this evening to our seventh lecture in the Enid and Lester Morse Historic Design Lecture Series. This wonderful public program was established in 2011 through an inspired gift from our dedicated trustee, Dinnie Morse, and her husband Lester. Their unstinting support for the collection and tremendous generosity has allowed us to bring important design scholars to Cooper Hewitt, such as Jules Stern, Carolyn Sargensen, Cheryl Buckley, and Rainier Barzen to share the latest research on design history from the Renaissance up to the present day, and shed new light on significant works in our rich and diverse collection of over 210,000 objects. Yes, wow. And most of them you can actually find online now. We have digitized more than 180,000 of our collection. It's online, so please jump on cooperhewitt.org and enjoy browsing the museum's collection. I just had the pleasure of meeting this evening's speaker, Jacob Moss, who arrived from London 24 hours ago, and this is his first visit to New York. In fact, it's his first visit to the United States, and I also learned that he has not done much traveling up until now because of a field line, and so I'm hoping that this is the beginning of a new chapter in your career. I also understand tomorrow Jacob will be going out to the museum's storage area in New Jersey with our conservation staff and curators to look at the museum's fan collections. Jacob Moss, curator of the Fan Museum in London, will speak to us on the history of European fan painting. Sharing highlights from both Cooper Hewitt's and the Fan Museum's collections, Jacob will give a guided tour of the golden age of fan painting and share the latest findings on the exceptional talents of the draftsmen, painters, and craftsmen who elevated these fashionable accessories into works of art. Cooper Hewitt holds over 300 folding fans, fan leaves, and signs for fan leaves in its collection, including a magnificent since 18th century pleaded Cabrero fan currently on view in the Hewitt sisters collect exhibition on the museum's second floor. We are thrilled Jacob is with us tonight to share his expertise and research. He became the curator of the Fan Museum after receiving a master's degree in fashion curation from the London College of Fashion and most recently oversaw the curation and installation of treasures of the Fan Museum. On view through June 5th the exhibition celebrates the museum's 25th anniversary and its extraordinary holdings of over 5,000 fans and fan leaves. The only museum of its kind in the United Kingdom, the Fan Museum's conservation efforts, research activities, and special exhibitions have contributed to a greater awareness and appreciation of the fan's breadth of creative expression. I know very little about fans so I'm really looking forward to the next part. Please join me in welcoming Jacob. Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. Thank you very much for that wonderful introduction and for mentioning my fear of flying which I think actually might be coming to an end now, I have to say. It's wonderful to be here in New York. This is my first visit. Wonderful weather, wonderful food and so lovely to meet you all and find so many fan enthusiasts amongst you so I'm hoping this should be easy work for me tonight. So ladies and gentlemen, my presentation this evening is on the topic of European fan painting. Encompassing over 250 years of creativity, fan painting is an intriguing art form and until recent times relatively overlooked and in turn misunderstood, the Cooper Hewitt's collection of over 300 folding fans includes numerous top quality painted examples and I'll be presenting a number of interesting pieces from the collection which illustrates the development and diversity of fan painting over the course of time. You'll also be seeing some of the fan museum's treasures as you said kindly mentioned the UK's only museum dedicated to the history of fans and craft of fan making has an exceptional collection even if I do say so myself of over 5,000 fans and fan leaves, dating from the 12th century to the present day. The discipline of fan painting I feel is best described as a transitional art form subject to the baguaries of fashion and taste and throughout history more often the line been exalted and at this point I quote from the London tradesmen at 1747. Fan painting is an ingenious trifling branch of the painting business it requires no great fancy nor much skill in drawing or painting to make a workman a glare of color is more necessary than a polite intervention. This somewhat flippant evaluation is one repeated time and again and it would seem there was no greater slur than in comparing fine artists to fan painter Edidaro does exactly this in 1760 when he accuses Boucher of slipping into mannerism and he says he has become a fan painter he has only two colors left white and red make up that what you will and according to macabre Percival author of the fan book which is in 1921 well-painted fans are graceful in composition delicate in color charming in sentiment but lack the touch of greatness and so it's against a climate of disparagement and artistic snobbery but fan painters come to drive their trade we will discover however the contrary to the view expressed in the London tradesmen Edidaro and McIver fan painters from the ages often demonstrated a lightness of touch which rivaled the very best miniaturists and an ability to adapt rectangular compositions to better suit the fan-shaped leaf. Okay so from out the courts of Europe the wearing of fans gained momentum during the 16th century contemporary portraits such as these two portraits here show women wearing fixed fans with handles wrought of metal set with ostrich plumes a type we've come to describe at the fan museum as the feather duster very glamorous one of that but by the close of the 17th century folding fans why he acknowledged as a Japanese invention have superseded fixed fans to become indispensable costume accessories more than simply cooling devices they were symbols of wealth and status folding fans were a canvas upon which every facet of life itself seems to have been recorded from classical subjects to royal births marriages and scenes of everyday life a fan unfolded reveals much about the time and place during which it was at first fluttered so what are the reasons why women took up folding fans with such further on a practical basis they were supremely portable compact when closed and could be set to a diverse range of uses on a cultural level fans offered an element of surprise of spectacle and and actually a lot of opportunities for nonverbal communication as observed by Joseph aderson who famously remarked women are armed with fans as men are with sorts and sometimes do more execution with them make about what you will now in order to understand fully the transitional nature of fan painting i feel it's probably best described presented as a chronological sequence comprising of distinct phases which in itself presents me with a number of problems for example it's not uncommon to discover fans assembled from parts made during different periods and often fan painters were inclined to imitate the decorative styles of previous epochs and sometimes with enough credibility to muddy water even further similarly identifying where fans were made is quite often a complex task it's work bearing in mind the trade in fans was very much transcontinental england for example imported fan leaves painted in italy and quantities of sticks from china and the fan illustrated is one example whereby an italian leaf had been matched to an english montur and it's also entirely possible the leaf was in fact painted by an italian working in england which brings me on to mention the movement of people involved in the fan trade whatever the cause of movement be that unavoidable displacement or more of that later or freely chosen with regards to fan painters they often develop these hybridized styles of painting which are not easily assignable to one nation or another all things considered the first phase i would describe as a period of consolidation beginning in the mid 17th century and moving through into the early part of the 18th century and it's during this time that fan painting really begins to flourish and centres of excellence emerge in france holland italy amongst others but it will be sometime yet before english fan painters began to compete with their continental counterparts and so we start with a number of early painted fans the first of which dates from circa 1681 and forms part of a fan museum's permanent display okay we're going to start with quite an unusual piece but i'll go i will explain it and all will become clear painted in body color on vellum and mounted onto a wooden panel the scene depicted is of the grandeur fans 20th birthday celebration and is notable for the inclusion of king louis cattles and queen marie torrez who sits as you might expect centre stage on france it's interesting to note if you cast your eye along the whole of the fan all of the ladies are wearing folding fans so that's an indication but by this time 1681 folding fans were an essential part of quarter-parallel now at first glance the work appears to be nothing more than a small painting of rectangular form but look closer and the boundaries of the fan leaf which i very hand leave for you highlighted in red can be clearly discerned from the surrounding areas now when a fan leaf is transformed into a rectangular painting we refer to it as an extended family oddly enough a relatively large number of 17th century french fan paintings have been adapted in this manner to explain this occurrence we should consider the conditions under which fan painters in paris operated around this time in the capital city of france fan painting began to attain a high degree of perfection under the patronage of louis cattles who in 1678 sanctioned the establishment of a guild of master fan makers the community des éventes fan painters who belong to the guild were not permitted to make and sell works in any form other than fan paintings the suggestion therefore is that in painting extended fan leaves guild members found a way in which they might negotiate those restrictions without fear of reprisal which might have resulted in a costly fine and we need to bear in mind that fan painters were not earning a good living so avoiding avoiding fines would have been high on the agenda now what's more this particular fan leaf and others like it shows no sign of having ever been pleated and although there is little attempt to color match belief and extension in this case often it's almost impossible to distinguish the point at which the fan leaf in the extension meet which suggests that the work to both was completed contemporaneously by the same hand now i think it's worth mentioning also at this point but many fan painters at this time and throughout the 18th century operated outside of the guild structure and included a significant number of women and it would seem only in France where fan painters quite so rigidly controlled and while the paint while the painted fan was an accessory coveted by the aristocracy the painters of fans were simply facilitators generally working enormously rarely signing and of whom we still know relatively little about why fan painters didn't sign their works is not entirely understood as most other forms of decorative art bear either a signature or an insignia i suspect one of the reasons might well be to do with legitimacy for example if there was no legal entitlement to make and sell fan paintings we can assume the artist would have wanted to do so with caution in order to avoid the attention of the guild regulators so in this context the signature rather acts like a fingerprint tying perpetrator to crime okay so the process of preparing painting and assembling fans i think is best described and illustrated in Diderot's Encyclopedia first published in 1765 this this is one of two engravings i'm going to show you which show the largely female workforce engaged in activities such as for preparation and gluing of the arc-shaped fan papers and that's what you can see happening here the small room in which the women work is sparsely furnished and indicates the lowly status according to both working or preparatory aspects of fan production in contrast the setting in which the fan thing to exercise as her trade appears reasonably comfortable the room is well lit and the furnishings give the impression of a domestic dwelling sitting at a desk she is probably copying onto a fan leaf a design set within the arc-shaped frame in front of her now in general fan painters were more likely to take their cue from engraved copies of master paintings than to execute original designs fan painters were masters in the art of adaptation and for nothing we're reinventing a rectangular composition to better suit the arc-shaped fan leaf now in order to unify the composition modifications might include displacement of figures a distortion of the horizon and the introduction of ornamental motifs to the outer reaches of belief again to bring some sensor of unity to it now this particular fan demonstrates perfectly the fan painters skin in adaptation painted in gouache on a dark skin leaf the subject depicted is the battle of arbala or alexander versus darious after a painting by called toner painted between 1644 and 1655 so if you just keep this painting in your mind we're going to go straight back to the fan so you can see theatricality of the artist's original composition with its seething mass of warring figures and horses has been faithfully replicated on the leaf of the fan the subject is presented as an asymmetric composition in which the battle seems to surge across the leaf from left to right and you might be surprised to find a subject such as this portrayed without compromise upon an article well widely considered as in heavenly feminine but read between the pleats and we discover that each and every fan painting is a highly nuanced declaration of identity and morality and so in disrespect nothing is ever left to chance the figure of alexander the great who is i suppose the main protagonist on this fan uh is throughout history one closely associated with heroism and virtue a beacon of masculinity to whom men undoubtedly aspired and i'm thinking again louis cattles and women i think it's safe to assume may have desired so if this was a fan was gifted by a gentleman to a woman he is aligning himself with alexander the great i suspect so that's always a message in this painting do do excuse me for drinking water i woke up this morning with absolutely horrendous cult so so bear with me i do apologize now we move on um this is one of my favorites from the fan routine collection it's an absolute beauty um but actually it's been it reproduces very well in large scale so that's good for inspiration fan painters look at particular regularity to classical subjects fans painted with stories from greek and roman mythology conveyed an air of cultural enlightenment and of course facilitated socially appropriate conversations the judgment of paris is perhaps the most commonly represented of all the greek myths the concept of beauty trying to think above all other worldly concerns i suspect chimes just as strongly today as it did throughout the long 18th century now this fan offers a traditional interpretation of the greek myth with the hero paris presenting the golden apple to venus the victor in this beauty contest like no other now let me show you some detail on the sticks which are quite exceptional um the decoration of quite a few sticks leaves us in no doubt but this is a fan connected in every which way to affairs of the heart each one each of the sticks carries an amorous motif and an inscription such as i'll give you just a couple i seek the brunette very specific and i cry for your absence now in comparing this fan with its motifs of vanity and desire with that of the previous example showing the violence of warfare we gain a sense of how fan painters oscillated between different subjects and themes always interpreted but interpreted them according to the cultural and artistic conventions of the period now the judgment of paris this is i did say the judgment of paris was depicted with regular regularity on fans this is one of two that i'm showing you is the subject for this fan which has only obverse and for those of you who aren't used to the word obverse um it's slightly arcade but i've come to get used to it at the fan museum just means front effectively but we tend not to use front and back because sometimes it's not clear which is which with fans so we use obverse and reverse um this has a beautifully delicately rendered sepia ink drawing and the fan painter took his cue from an oil painting by Carl Maratta uh who in turn might have based his painting on an earlier engraving by Ray Mondi after Raphael you can kind of see the similarity if you look at the main figure group uh the three goddesses and we go back again kind of see me where it how it comes along and so in identifying the fan painter's source materials we start to construct these interlinking routes of artistic appropriation from monster painting to fan and most often via print and it's just fascinating to find you know to see how different artists beg still and borrow from another because it's happening so much with fans um and then we're moving on to the first of our Koopa Hewitt examples and in addition to completed fans there's another type of folding fan enjoyed widespread popularity at an early date brisee fans typically comprise of a series of uniformly tapered blades usually of one material such as ivory uh secured at the top edge by an interweaving cord or ribbon they were initially imported to the west via china and by the second half of the 17th century both the dutch and the french were crafting very high quality versions so the designs were usually painted in either an oil-based medium or gouache or even tempera and sometimes they were lacquered or transparent varnish which not only protected the paintwork that heightened the coloring now this is this is one of the Koopa Hewitts as well and it's very typical in fact but it fuses decorative styles from both east and west typically early 18th early 18th century example opening to a wedge shape uh the upper section is are usually painted with classical biblical genre subjects while the lower part um if we're going to use fan terminology the gouache um and the guard sticks generally feature shimwata emotives scrollwork and vignettes now if we turn now to look at a split screen showing two sides of the same fan you can see on the um on the right hand side um only on the reverse that is only outlines of the design invisible um given the translucency of each wafer thin blade um i wonder if the outlines were not used as a guide for painting the obverse that's to say the outward public side of the fan now i'm not aware of any documentation which details the techniques used to paint breeze a fans um but someone's going to come come up to me after this lecture and tell me there are but logic does suggest um the blades were laid out in the correct order the design was um outlined painted in possibly varnished and then assembled once dry i'll let you have a just just take this fan in with it because while i have some water it's an absolute beauty and i'm devised to be talking about this so this is a real gem from the kupa hua collection um and while i've spent quite a lot of time looking at pouring over i'm in a gnawing as you do i can see lucy smiling there we've had a conversation or two about this one i'm really looking forward i'm hoping i'm going to see this tomorrow fantastic um now before i talk about the subjects depicted on the double leaf i'd like to address some concerns regarding manufacture um okay so look closely at the top of the leaf and you'll notice and i've been coming to you i've circled them you'll notice the ribs which support the cleats perforate and extend beyond the edge at the opposite end you take your eyes down to the lower end uh the lower border appears to have been cut away and subsequently repainted onto the sticks now this is an indication that this current configuration is perhaps not the original arrangement um now relatively large sums of money um was spent off ends of this quality and so if either sticks or leaf sustained damage it would have made perfect sense to seek some form of repair certainly but practice of remounting fan leaves is not uncommon and in fact many fan makers trade cards publicize their willingness to undertake repairs of this kind whether or not this is an original configuration does not detract from what is in my opinion a unique example of fan artistry the double parchment leaf has on both sides pen and ink drawings of contrasting subjects probably know in fact definitely by different artists the obverse this site uh perhaps excites the most uh the surface of the leaf is built up with layers of meticulous cross hatching reminiscent of engraving uh i've found myself asking is this the work of a fan painter or a fine artist the quality of the pen work suggests an exceptional draftsman uh but as with most fans of the period belief bears no signature and believe me when i say i have had 10 different magnifying glasses scouring relief for a signature because actually when fans were signed at this point inside fan painters were very naughty we used to hide their signatures in really unusual places i think they knew we would be doing this in 300 years time searching for their signatures so you find them in the most illogical places but believe me i've given it more than once over i don't think there's any signature which is a real shame because i i just got a feeling that this is by somebody great um maybe we can we can do some federal research or missing time to come um the subject the subject depicted is not one i've encountered before all the fans uh and shows a story from greek mythology the harpies harassing uh finneas the king of thrace the story unfolds uh around the central feasting table above which the boriads hurtle into battle with a morbid characteristically grotesque looking harpies and they really are quite revolting um i think that's why i love it it's so different uh now this is the gorge of a fan um and mystics carry this wonderfully freely painted with cocoa design possibly a slightly later edition um reminiscent actually of similar studies by a german-born artist france havermann and actually the kukuhu it has quite a lot of havermann's work it's something on display upstairs which you can see how how the work is extremely similar so we're looking at 1730 1740s i think okay onto the reverse yeah it's not easy to make out because it's a sepia drawing but i hope you can kind of see what's happening we have a classic grand tour subject the italian veduta in this instance we see a beautifully detailed view of the city of rome with seven prominent landmarks numbered and conversely listed in a medallion on the far right of belief all but one of the landmarks have been identified and that's very useful because it enables us to narrow the data production down a bit because some of these buildings weren't built at such a time and not until so we've been able to get the dating down i think to around 1700 to 1730 um and around this time um many of the best topographical artists active in rome were in fact dutch uh and this sketch evokes to my mind some of the valvitelli his detailed drawings of the city of rome you can see valvitelli's drawing on the left and the fan on the right and if you just take a moment to look at those you can i think get a sense that there's a definitely a correlation between the two styles and the pen work okay so the next two fans i'd like to present chair a a number of similarities suggesting both and i'm going to stick my neck on the line here both come from the same workshop and i'm really quite sure of this um and interestingly one's from the fan museum and one's from a coup de huite so i like this link we're making um the fan museum example uh is painted on the obverse with the visitation of the virgin mary who is depicted approaching an elderly saint elizabeth with Zacharias greeting joseph on the left now fans such as this reasonably simply crafted there's not much concession to decoration here um and painted with an old testament subject i suspect probably designed to be worn at church now the identification of the um of the fan painting provided yet another opportunity to construct a chain of artistic appropriation i love this kind of work it's really it's kind of investigative work and when you can make these links from the fan to the painting you really feel like you're getting somewhere and on this case you can see here an oil sketch um on the left painted by rubens uh in 1632 and it's i mean it's followed so closely on the leaf of a fan and then you have an engraving above it which i suspect would have been the engraving that was used by the fan painter um now onwards the kubikuit fan look i've tried to select fans for you actually but some of them are slightly unusual and unique in their their type and this is really quite quite different this fan it's painted with kind of fluidity which i don't think you usually see on fans of this period and it's quite beautiful but less success in identifying um in identifying the subjects or the source but i'm reasonably sure the figure on the left represents flora uh the goddess of flowers who bears more than a passing resemblance to rubens flora painted in 1625 very similar i'd like to take a moment to talk about the side of the fan usually facing inward and the ways in which fan painters adorned the side less seen now in general the reverse if a tool painted would carry a subject secondary to that of the obverse and might only consist of a hastily brushed vignette of figures or of a landscape more often than not executed by a moderately talented painter some of the final quality fans of the late 17th and 18th century however are painted on the reverse with charming floral arrangements and this is the reverse of the fan we just saw um and i think very reminiscent of the gilt level wall coverings that were also produced in benevolence at a similar date weddings weddings provided an occasion for the wearing of fans more lavish and otherwise might have been considered appropriate within a church setting and in the 18th century increasingly elaborate fans were made to commemorate the troval and marriage ceremonies and as a consequence it became traditional for brides and their attendance to carry fans at weddings and although the leaf of this fan has suffered the effects of time it is nevertheless very well painted with an allegory of marriage the two central figures sport classical dress and are probably no in fact no doubt intended to represent Venus and Mars they stand before the altar of love with hymen the god of marriage presiding over this union between beauty and valor the same union is represented on this fan dating from the mid-18th century now we've arrived at a period synonymous with high quality fan painting and as fans grew both in scale and span fanlies offered unparalleled opportunities to demonstrate artistic brilliance in this instance the composition is derived from a painting of Venus and Mars by a dutch artist and Venus is shown semi-recomment her breast exposed and Mars totally beguined the amourini toying with his weaponry and we see this a lot on this type of allegory is a symbol of his disarmament I suppose his capitulation to Venus now staying with the classical world this lavish mid-18th century fan really embodies the artistry of the fan painter during this golden age of fan painting and I have to say I think this is one of the cuckoo hewitt's greatest fan treasures it really is a beauty the parchment leaf is painted with the story of virginia first recounted by the roman historian Livy virginia's story centers upon themes of violated honor and matrimonial fidelity but what really elevates this fan above others is the way in which the fan paint animates the entire leaf with narrative detail and cleverly arranges the subject matter on different planes to create this sense of depth of field which is really quite difficult to achieve on a semi-circle fan leaf light and shade too as you can see into play beautifully the story's main protagonists virginia and marcus are picked out in this kind of passage of bright pastel tonality while the outer subordinate areas of the leaf appear to shrink away into shadow and for me this is one of those rare examples where a fan painter creates the illusion of having conceived the painting as a fan shape rather than the adaptation of a rectangular composition that's a bit of a detail so you can really kind of have a get to see the quality of the painting now the classical world continued to offer inspiration but the diversification of subjects and themes accelerated as time moved on and the second half of the 18th century saw fan painters turn with increasing regularity to the pastoral and romantic world evoked by artists such as vatoe luchet, lancre and patin the artists which fan painters now emulated were almost exclusively french and that that kind of mirrors the status of france as the leading kind of the epicenter of the fan trade at this time and and thereafter the second half of the 18th century also heralds a different approach to painting leaf as fan painters increasingly treated the art less of it as a continuous surface and more of a closed surface to disrupt disrupt and divide and so elaborate cartouches of varying size and shape now a dormant leaf and provided opportunities to imitate and blend the style of several several popular artists at once so this tront loyfan designed to deceive the eye is typical of its kind and features a medley of guilt-framed cartouches resembling prints and paintings now the blue background carries sprigs of flowers and painted ribbon of lace which actually interweaves and in turn unifies this arrangement of cartouches the fan painter exploits the format well and pays homage to Jean-Baptiste Patte who I've mentioned already whose painting of a romantic couple he recreates in the central central cartouche so I've also now like now to take a moment to bring in England and acknowledge the contribution of English fan painters who at points during the 18th century were painting fans which rivaled the very best quality of the French and Italian examples this was not however always the case as the craft of fan making in England only really begins to flourish in the years following the revocation of the edict of knot in 1675 now that's an event which precipitated an influx of Huguenot craftspeople to the city of London escaping religious persecution in France so as if to prove a point this block printed fan commemorating the restoration of a monarchy demonstrates a simplicity quite at odds with fans painted in Italy and France at a similar date England's position though as a leading center of fan painting was relatively short-lived but rise as rapid as the decline we gain a sense of the transitory nature of England's fan trade in a fascinating pamphlet which I recently discovered I say discovered we the fan museum where I'm curator it came to auction this exceedingly rare pamphlet and we did put in a quite a large bit unfortunately we were outbid I was able to track down the person who got the objects and they were very kind in sending me over a photocopy of it so I found it full we had a lucky escape we've got the pamphlet and we didn't pay for it but so this pamphlet is fascinating it's written by a fan painter which is as I said fan painters did not have a voice we really didn't hear from them they were just busy towing away painting fans so to have something from the 18th century written by a fan painter is wonderful for us entitled wait for a deep breath observations on the rise progress and present declining state of the fan trade I've abbreviated it the author outlines the various challenges faced by those involved in the production of fans in England at this time we learned that the business of painting fans were involved artists of several denominations so we had painters of roman and history subjects we had painters of birds flowers and those that just stuck to ornamental borders we also learned that on the continent so I really do like this bit English fans were generally held in high regard the author writes our fans became known abroad we sent them into Holland and all over Germany to Spain and even to Italy when the English fans came to be seen there they were found to be made up in so good a taste that we had orders for great quantities now perhaps most significantly the author offers an explanation of a sudden demise of fan painting in England he begins an entertaining diatribe in which he suggests that the rising popularity of printed fans which he refers to as the evil triggered the rumination of the fan painter he comments I love this one the lady of quality down to the kitchen made were pleasing themselves with the cheapness of their bargains we also learned that fan prints were often colored by fan painters who again the words of the author were constrained to do that rather than perish this is probably an appropriate moment to look at one of these evils and anything but I think you'll agree so now this is something of a rarity belief of this English fan carries an engraved design which has been overpainted in watercolor a central mask is probably with peat pulse cut away i-holes is probably the most striking element of this rather playful model designed specifically to appeal to the Spanish market of which I think only six or seven examples each a variant of the other are thought to have survived I think there's one in the Met and some private collectors have some and maybe one up at Boston I'm not entirely sure because you have some yeah good these people are fans experts here now what really strikes me as interesting is that the very same time the author of this pamphlet is lamenting the demise of his trade England's for England's fan painters were producing some of their very finest work this I think you'll agree is the epitome of Englishness the odd verse painted with a Gainesborough inspired scene of dalliance and dazzling which takes place within a romanticized rural setting so this and many other English fans of the period are feature on the reverse side designed painted in the Schumachery manner the paintings certainly vary in quality but usually combine figures in a landscape interspersed with peonies and branches of Brossum another one look closely and you can see the ribs of the sticks the ribs of the part of the the stick that intersects the family and kind of gives it support and when that indicates belief is single and we would say mounted analogues we use a lot of French terminology there's I just really don't think there's any English equivalent and it sounds lovely anyway the ribs are usually overpainted and incorporated into the design although little care is given to color matching as often the ribs are painted in in tones completely different to that of the leaf now time for another a love of gem from a coup de cuite so as the century progressed the taste for shinwasry certainly groom peaking around 1770 and at this time fans are painted with evermore fanciful designs which conjure this perceived exoticism which the Faris continue to evoke in the minds of Europeans this striking French fan with shinwasry vignettes after Jean-Baptiste's filament is very much of its kind the caricature like figures are unmistakably European in appearance and really only identified as Chinese by their costume which in itself is more Gilbert than Gilbert and Sullivan in everything but much earlier the blue ground is a very interesting one which is painted with these wonderful little sprays of flowers in a style I think many of you will agree reminiscent of Serge the porcelain in fact at this time Serge reduced wears in a similarly distinctive color called blue celeste and it's actually by said what we learned the names of a number of 18th century fan painters for it would seem many who went to work at the porcelain factory in a previous life were fan painters so from my graphical records we learn of a monsieur Bacchilier one of almost 20 fan painters called into work on porcelain and who specialized in a minor genre of flower painting and a Philippe Secois implied itself as a landscape painter but prior to this he is he is known to have painted ornamental borders on fans now if I can take you back once more to ancient Rome and to a subject depicted on fans we've almost as much frequency as the judgment of Paris throughout the history of art a ruler the goddess of the dawn is usually depicted racing across the sky with Apollo's horse-drawn chariot in hot pursuit surrounded by coterie of graceful figures personifying the hours now this finely painted fan from the Coupa Huet collection replicates in miniature Guido Reni's fresco of Aurora and her companions at the Casino de Aurora in Rome now fan painter applies a technique a stipple technique which is typical of Italian fan painting and actually when you get in close you see it's very reminiscent of pointillism I'll just go back once more so you can really come see the similarity in the composition between the two now moving on perhaps only Guettino's fresco of the same subject with staying with Aurora rivals Reni's in terms of impact painted only a few years after Reni's masterpiece the composition follows a similar path with Aurora and her retinue tearing across the sky an unmounted family for permanent display of fan museum carries a painting after Guettino's version and forms part of a set of three fan-shaped paintings which are without doubt by the same artist and at the start of my research for this presentation each of these three works were attributed to an Italian artist who went by the name of Antonio Poggi who worked in London from 1776 to 1799 but after discovering a similar fan painting in the collection of the Cupid Hewitt only this time dubiously attributed and we I think we agree now Lucy yeah to Vigile Brun I think we both got it but both museums got this one wrong I went in search of the unidentified suspect who I understood to be the artist responsible for actually painting not only the fan museum's three works but the Cupid Hewitt's work which we'll now have a look at so executed in a similar style as the fan museum's leaf the Cupid Hewitt's example features a central cartouche painted with an allegory of night also after Guettino. Guettino's fresco paintings were clearly admired as the fan museum has this same subject again I only discovered this a few weeks ago with 5,000 fans in the collection things do go on to the radar it has to be said but Mrs. Alexander who's the director of the fan museum I showed her this and she bought this out so you can see it's exactly the same subject but on a mounted fan so here are all the four designs together to give you a kind of idea of how they share so many similarities now they're all painted in gouache on fine skin in a very precise style probably designed to appeal to grand tourists. Each of her work features at least one cartouche with a classical subject surrounded by an architectural framework with intricate beaded borders and a fanciful array of neo-pompean ornaments now a high level of detail suggests to me that fan-shaped paintings such as this were not always designed to be made up as fans and in fact were supposed to be enjoyed in this their unadulterated form now each of the observations I've just relayed the characterizing traits of a style of painting associated with Thomas Bigatti or might be right might be Bigatti but apologize for that he's an Italian artist none to have painted a number of fans during his lifetime and none of the work but unfortunately none of these works are signed attribution I think we have to earn on the side of caution and we'll say School of Bigatti for the moment I'm gonna stick my neck out I think it's him and so this is one of his works which really shows you his style I mean this really this superb wall decoration combines all of the decorative elements you see on the fans and more now that really brings us to the close of the 18th century and we're going to move on a little bit now and fans now echoed this is right at the end of the 18th and into the 19th century that kind of a blend of both centuries fans now echo a pronounced shift in fashion from the excess of frivolity of Rococo to the refined and elegant aesthetics of the neoclassical and empire styles and with many of France's skilled fan makers either lost to or fighting even in Napoleonic wars fan production as a consequence became less work intensive and so the painted fan is cast aside in favour of smaller models with textile leaves embellished with sequins or breezes such as this made of pressed horn this has been sustained to resemble tortoise shell and it's been painted with swags of forget-me-nots charming as this is it does it has none of the impact of the grandiose 17th 18th century fans now we move ever onwards swiftly onwards it's not until the second half of the 19th century but the painted fan truly reasserts its status as an essential costume accessory reinvented as the ultimate feminine symbol of luxury and excess no doubt encouraged by Eugénie Empress of the French herself an avid wearer of fans the fashion conscious and the money the money to cut the fan with unabashed further Paris's temples of spectacle its balls opera houses and theaters once more were a flutter with painted fans of the finest quality the Empress is known to her very good one of the celebrated fan makers of the period Felix Alexandre who alongside his equally esteemed rival Duvelois assembled a coterie of gifted painters many of whom exhibited at the Paris salon in an altogether different league to the professional fan painters of the previous century the likes of Moreau, Lamy, Paul Montier they readily signed their exquisite confections and in doing so they bestowed upon the discipline of fan painting a credibility and status hitherto attained now fans at this time tend to be painted with great finesse albeit in a kind of traditional rather academic style the leaves emblazoned with pastiche subjects of Duvalto or perhaps berries and cherubs or sprays of full bloom roses now this is a period of conspicuous consumption of a newly mulled to sort ways in which to wear their wealth and success and this is accurately reflected in the fans and I'm going to be controversial here because if I were to make any criticism of fans painted at this time I might perhaps call into question that rather subjective notion of taste I'm at space in which excess and luxury collide we need to keep a quittered ally I think with fans because no it's yeah it's good to do that from time to time as the century progressed we as the century drew to a close the painted fan once more diminished in importance only to be usurped by the feathered and printed variety fan painters whom now included among their ranks an increasing number of amateurs favored a sentimental highly feminized style of painting typified by the proliferation of flower subjects I have to say this is a really nice example of that style and it's by someone known as Bioté the sisters Bioté were celebrated with their distinctive arrangements of flowers painted fluidly in pastoral shades and although at least three of them are known to have painted fans only Eileen Valerie achieved notoriety and worked often to do bellow art and keys and here is another of Bioté's rather lovely lovely fans okay the final two works I'd like to present in many ways sit outside of the tradition of fan painting but nevertheless the two of the fan museum's greatest treasure treasures at the very same time alexandre was bringing to fan paintings salon-activated artists another group of painters working outside of the established order were also drawn to the discipline to explain the involvement of fine artists within the story of fan painting we should look eastward and in particular toward Japan after Commodore Perry forcibly reopened Japan's for west in 1858 ending a sustained period of self-imposed isolation into Europe came quantities of Japanese woodblock prints sculpture lack aware and of course fans artists such as Degas to lose the trek and go down began to experiment with fan painting perhaps recognizing in this unique format a creative challenge which required an approach quite unlike that of a rectangular canvases upon which they usually painted with little regard for convention fine artists executed fan paintings in which compositions appear to float freely moving beyond the boundaries of the family take for example this design by a fan by Paul Gauguin painted in 1887 depicting a martini landscape the art becomes a window into which the viewer gazes during his lifetime Gauguin painted over 20 fan designs his only visit to the island of martini by all accounts was fraught with illness however it must have made an impression because he paints this almost a year after on his return to Paris and boy does he recreate that kind of tropical idyll but i can tell you on a winter's a grey winter london morning when you walk into the room where this is and you open the doors and you just ah transported we finish with a fan painting by a less vetted artist in Gauguin but equally gifted sickot notorious for his impressionistic visceral portraits of london's working ladies painted this fan for a fellow artist and friend Florence Pash entitled Little Dot Heatherington at the Old Bedford Theatre the work is based on an earlier painting forming part of a celebrated Old Bedford series which included lithographs oil paintings and etchings and in fact the painting which precedes this is a an exceptional painting and it's just such a shame it's gone into private ownership in monaco never to be seen again i'm sure but anyway in contrast to the studied approach of the professional fan painters here the paint is applied to the male in a spontaneous manner drawn back and forth across the pleated surface using a restrained somber color palette sicker it votes beautifully the smoked filled arena of the musical now the ethereal figure in the spotlight is little dot a young jobbing actress of pre-old descent another one who we don't really know very much about she never quite made it in the way that her competitor Murray Lloyd did but actually if you look at her she's doing something quite pronounced she's pointing upward and this is a tape on a well-known musical song the boy i love is up in the gallery so but like like the painting by Grogel sicker's fan operates as a window into which the viewer glimpses a fleeting moment and just like the figures depicted in me at the outer recesses of belief we too are into this picture we become i think we become a theater audience with them i should like to finish by saying that the creative discipline of fan painting is a vast territory of which much remains unexplored and although i've been with the fan museum now oh for just over five years i still have this sense of standing on the tip of one gigantic iceberg in short in the time i've been presenting this evening i hope really is only to offer some insights into the diversity and the culture of fan painting and have shown fans to be much more than so-called and i hate this ladies trifles but instead they are authentic cultural barometers i hope also to have presented the case for reviewing the traditionally upheld status of fan painters as simply workmen because quite simply these paintings they produce are anything but work today thank you i think we're going to have a quite a few questions if anyone has any very fond of trifles i just want to know where the reproductions are like right now where can you buy the reproduction well it's a good question of reproductions because there isn't a day we go to buy in a fan museum where a visitor doesn't say where can i get an 18th century reproduction i like this one it's just oh yeah i'm going to get a read for a ticket um there really isn't someone needs to go into business because nobody is really doing reproduction fans and i tell you what's down to nabby do you know don't i'm sure you know down to nabby down to nabby recently came to us um and good old men for doing their homework and they wanted to have a fan reproduced from our collection uh to show in the series but in fact the director of my museum said no no no no you're not doing that absolutely not she didn't like that at all so she actually accompanied the fan to uh to the sets in fact one of our fans an amazing late 19th century at thousand addicts owned was held by the duchess dowager it was quite a moment but i think if there's anyone out there who is who's got a business and my uh some active business acumen going to fan reproduction any more questions uh what is the what is the best way to maintain fans uh i have like a 300 fans what um you are a serious collector well again there was so many different opinions on how to preserve how to store your fans at the fan museum um we store our folding fans closed number one room we have five thousand of them if we were to store them open we'd need uh new premises um but actually i think storing the folding fans closed is is probably the best way because the leaf is then away from light and the pleats are being preserved if you keep them open you know they're going to slacken with time i don't feel that's the best way i would put them in drawers um we're very lucky all our drawers at the fan museum are lined with cedar of leaveners which bugs hate um but i would suggest you know just keep them away from lights and fluctuations in temperature perhaps wrap each one in acid-free tissue that should do it thank you any more questions was there wearing a fan seasonal well that there was yeah but actually there were fans for all seasons um and certainly we have to remember that fans for no fashion and so in that respect uh there wouldn't been fans for summer you mean you had your your lace lace certainly was really wonderful in the summer but also um very early on in the history of fans they transcend this kind of cooling device status and so even in the very colder countries switzerland and above they're using fans throughout the year um but as you will know their status symbols so they are using them i mean one wants to maintain status from january to december all year all year round yeah merely to uh respond to the gentleman's question about storage and conservation of course lucy commoner who has uh been with the kubernetes for 39 years and is in charge of all of their conservation developed in the 80s what i consider to be probably one of the most uh professional and best ways of storing you know fans and uh i don't think her uh developments then have been superseded by anybody and i know it's been emulated by the fan museum in london that i've i've known helene elecander since before the museum opened so you know this museum the kubernetes has been outstanding in setting standards for conservation efforts question over here right time we have the range oh i'm one here thank you very much for your interesting talk i hope this question isn't beyond the scope of it i used to work for a museum that had a decent collection of fans and several have been catalogued as so-called world war one fans with banners of roosters actually um which i yeah which i guess were symbols of the first world war and i was wondering if if it was common for there to be political scenes or scenes related to patriotism on fans or what the function of these or absolutely i mean in fact i should be talking of patriotism that early english band i showed you the woodblock printed one was uh celebrating the restoration of the monarchy you know i mean fans have been used to communicate political beliefs um all sorts of all sorts of strains of your character and personality um we even have at the fan museum which a fan printed with the trial of warren hastings um you have current affairs i mean seriously i go back to that opening statement but fans at campuses upon which every facet of life itself has been presented and anybody who thinks of them as these kind of innocuous kind of little feminine goodies with berries of cherubs but i mean there's just so much more to it they run the whole gamut of life itself it's all there so if you're not if you're not necessarily interested in fans as fans but you have a kind of social cultural remit in some other form you must go to fans because you will definitely clean something from them in some form or another yeah so i think we have time for maybe two more quick question ladies down the front who's been holding her hand that's for a very long time thank you thank you this is fascinating i'm just really curious about the materiality of these objects and specifically you mentioned i was surprised to hear oil and varnish particularly because those are heavier and i imagine would actually be more difficult to sort of be flirtatious with um but i'm in thinking about gouache and and watercolor as being sort of the media that i was familiar with um and in terms of the lineage of those materials in illuminated manuscripts and miniature painting um i you know those are arts that are also sort of liminal and i'm just curious about the sort of resonance of that of materials that are that are used to make the fans is it because these are amateur materials is it because there's a certain wealth or status that's associated with the 16th century and 15th century illuminated manuscripts yeah it's really hard for me to say what i mean there are some practical reasons as to why fan painters would have used water-based pigments there's a kind of practicality to we have to remember that a fan is not a piece of fine art it is it is folded it is scored it is opened it is closed it is wafted it's mistreated and you know your materials that you choose to work with i think almost guided in a kind of practical sense but certainly when you look at the um there was a revival in temporal use on Italian families um towards the end of the 18th century and that undoubtedly comes back to a kind of heritage looking back to antiquity because they're painting these very ornate neopompay and designs using tempura so i do think pigments and materials are not just used in a sense there is a practical sense but certainly there's a kind of a deeper you'll write a cultural kind of resonance to those thank you hi hello you were adorable i know the subject of this lecture was european fan painting but did this tradition make its way to america yep certainly you know what there are there's some really fantastic fans in the hypochoeic collection that um was painted here in america you had some wonderful um fashion fan houses here in the later 19th century in particular and also we've discovered very recently in our own collection um a fan um an ivory fan uh chinese but we we now have identified who it was made for it was an american uh american lady uh it's dated about 1790 so we definitely know what fans were already going over in china at a very early date certainly america has its own kind of um microcosm i would say of industry and painting styles and you know what it sits it does sit somewhere outside of what's happening in europe and what's happening in the east and i feel i'm going to hold my hands up and say it's an area but we don't look at enough you know we we find ourselves focusing on europe all the east and kind of overlooking what happened in the states and that's really not not good we should probably focus more on that and i think certainly if you're if you're a student here and you have access to the collection here i suspect there are some really good projects to be had in that in that area i can address that a little bit sorry um in the united states here we have a fan association of both america fan up which i am membership chair we yes we do have american fans they're made out of brain tree mass they're called hunt and allen yeah that you can go on and you could go on our fan a website fan association that work to do more research and to look at all the different events that we have founder is a fantastic organization go founder we've met some wonderful families do that for your organization amazing okay thank you thank you very much