G. Woolliscroft Rhead

“ We have seen how the good citizens of Dieppe celebrated the joyful occasion of the birth of the dauphin by the gift to the queen-mother of a precious fan of carved ivory. On the more humble printed fan, Immortality, amid a great concourse of people, with fireworks and illuminations in the background, presents the royal infant on a cushion, to kneeling, admiring, and devoted France, who offers a basket of hearts. ”

“ This delicate toy, this airy creation of gauze, ivory, and paint, frail and fragile almost as the flowers kissed by Aurora’s son, endowed apparently with the gift of perpetual youth, may claim a lineage older than the Pyramids; having its origin and being in the infancy of the world, before the birth of history, in that golden age when life was a perpetual summer, and care was not, when all was concord and harmony, and old age, long protracted, was dissolved in a serene slumber, and wafted to the mansions of the gods, the regions of eternal love and enjoyment. ”

“ The fan is in the hands of every one, from the merest baby to the big toreador, who employs it as a means of exciting the ire of his bovine adversary. It serves as convenient screen for the dark-eyed beauty, who, seated in the balcony in the still evening, listens eagerly to the impassioned serenade beneath.
At the theatre, says Blondel, nothing is more curious than the manipulation of these instruments, playing with the expressive grace which is a silent flirtation. ”

“ Boucher, friend and servant of La Pompadour, ‘with her fan that breaks through halberds,’97 has been styled, with more or less semblance to truth, the Anacreon of painters. His convention is of an entirely different order to that of Watteau and his school; but if his method and style is more artificial, it is because life and manners have become less sincere, and because he is true to his belief that ‘Nature wanted harmony and seduction’; he yields nothing to his predecessors in artistic power, he is completely master of his technique, and understands exactly the measure of his gifts. ”

“ Has not Gay told how the master Cupid traced out the lines, conceived the shape, converted his arrows into sticks, and from their Pg 3barbed points, softened by love’s flame, forged the pin? Is not the fan one of the chief weapons in the armoury of the Love-God? Is it not the rampart from behind which the fiercest fire of love’s artillery is directed? Nay, is it not in very truth the sceptre of the Love-God? Did not the Greeks early recognise this fact by placing the plumed fan in the hands of Eros himself? The fan is at once the creation of Amor and the chief ensign of his sovereignty! ”

“ As the climax, however, of costly magnificence,’ continues this writer, ‘I will conclude with a description of the fan of the Duchess of York, who, shortly after her arrival in England, displayed a pleated fan entirely of diamonds, with an ivory stick pierced and set with diamonds in a mosaic pattern; the outside ones were set with a single row of diamonds, whilst very large brilliants fastened the fan at the bottom.’
The eighteenth century was indeed, par excellence, the era of the fan, which was to be seen in the hands of every woman, from princess to peasant. ”

“ There is an infinite variety of motions to be made use of in the flutter of a Fan. There is the angry Flutter, the modest Flutter, the timorous Flutter, the confused Flutter, the merry Flutter, and the amorous Flutter. Not to be tedious, there is scarce any emotion in the mind which does not produce a suitable agitation in the Fan; insomuch that if I only see the Fan of a disciplined Lady I know very well whether she laughs, frowns, or blushes. ”

“ He was a man of singular gifts, a modern of the moderns, whose work, though doubtless derived from that of a past age, would have been impossible at any other epoch than our own. What Conder undoubtedly possessed, and in a very high degree, was that subtle quality which for lack of a better word we call style, a quality not easy of definition, but readily felt. It would be difficult to say what style is, it is far easier to say what it is not; it is not for example, design; a man may possess considerable power of design without much perception of style ”

“ We trust we have shown that, in the words of Sir George Birdwood, there is perhaps more in a fan than was dreamt of in Johnson’s matter-of-fact definition:—‘An instrument used by ladies to move the air and cool themselves.’
What, then, of the future? May we reasonably look forward in this twentieth century for a renaissance of the fan; for a re-attainment, if not of its past spiritual significance, at least of something of its artistic possibilities?
The future is full of hope; we have turned our backs upon the bad old nineteenth century, with its manifold outrages upon the æsthetic sense ”

“ The uses of the Fan? They are legion!—They record for us public events, military, political, civil; they tell us our fortunes; instruct us in Botany, in Heraldry, in tricks with cards; they propound conundrums; take us to the theatre, to bull-fights, to church, to the first balloon ascent; and to Mr. Thomas Osborne’s Duck-hunting! ”

“ Representations of the fan are of constant occurrence in Indian work, both illumination, embroidery, sculpture, and other material. On a curiously primitive embroidered napkin from Chamba, we are introduced to the worship of a Hindu deity—a king and queen are kneeling under a palm-tree, the god Ganesh in the distance with flag-fan; an attendant bears the peacock feather emblem of royalty, a second attendant waves a large heart-shaped fan. ”

“ Fashion hastened to make the toy worthy of figuring in grand adornment; the ordinary wood of the stick was replaced by other supports of a more precious material, with incrustations of gold, silver, enamel, and jewels. More capable artists were employed for the execution of the mounts; the éventaillistes learnt from the Italians to derive their inspiration from the great masters of their school. The decoration of the fan-leaves, therefore, acquired something of the suavity, graciousness, and courtliness associated with the work of the painters of the Grand Siècle. ”

“ This introduction of the folding-fan into Europe marks the beginning of a new era of the fan’s history, as, although both Chinese and Japanese fans possess qualities which are absolutely individual and unique, yet it must be confessed that the fan, in the hands of European artists, its early Oriental influence notwithstanding, ultimately developed a character and style quite its own, and reflecting the artistic conditions of its epoch and surroundings. ”

“ If the fan is efficacious as a weapon of offence in Love’s sieges, it is no less effective as a shield against Love’s darts. On a painted Spanish fan in the Schreiber Collection in the British Museum are represented three fair nymphs in a wooded landscape, one of whom is receiving on her fan an arrow discharged by the Love-God, who is accompanied by my lady Venus in her car. ”

“ In the exhibition of the Fanmakers’ Company at Drapers’ Hall in 1890, a ‘butterfly fan’ appeared. Two large gauze wings, speckled and veined to imitate a gigantic insect, form the fan, the body represented by the handle; upon pressing a button or spring, the wings are set in motion, and, by their fluttering, fan the bearer. ”

“ Nature, ever bounteous, provides us gratis, without any patent dues, with an instrument—the human hand—the most exquisitely delicate and complicated machine known to us; this instrument is directed by a force—the human mind—still more subtle, if possible, in the delicacy of its operations. In place of this, M. Alphonse Baude, in his wisdom, offers us his conglomeration of wheels, axles, metal bolts, and screws! The intelligent fan-lover will therefore note this date, and carefully examine any fan sticks made subsequent to it. ”

“ Great men, like angels, but too often come upon us unawares, and it is only upon their leave-taking, or after, that we become sensible of the loss of a gracious presence.
The delicate and refined art of Jean Louis Hamon was especially suited to the fan. For a considerable period he was associated with the Royal Porcelain works at Sèvres, producing a number of designs of that light fanciful character with which we are familiar in his paintings. He continued this style of composition, says M. Walther Fol, but applied it to the decoration of fans, in which he excelled. ”

“ It will be convenient, at this juncture, to describe in detail the various elements composing this fan-type which has easily distanced all others in the affections of the fair—a triumph so absolute and complete, that to ninety-nine women out of every hundred the idea of a fan is an instrument which may be folded. ”

“ Fair and delicate though these creations of Eastern ingenuity may be, the genius of Oriental imagery and fancy has discovered for us a still more delicate and effective instrument—a Sanskrit poet recounts a graceful fable of a princess of extreme beauty, who, although constantly attending and fanning the divine fire with a view to increasing the prosperity of her father, never succeeded in producing a flame save by the breath of her charming lips. ”

“ The fly-flap, chowr, chowrie, chourie, chaurie, is next in dignity to the umbrella, and was in the first instance devoted to the service of the gods. On a bas-relief of the pagoda of Elephanta, described by the Orientalist Langlés in his History of Hindostan, a servant is seen behind Brahma and Indra holding in each hand chauries or fly-whisks. In the India Museum is a charming little chaurie with silver handle and ribbons of silver gauze tipped with red silk, used by Jains to drive away insects from their idol without destroying them. ”

“ It is not unusual to have cut in the ribs of the fans a brief account of the circumstances under which the birds were shot. The German Empress is said to have expressed a wish last summer for such a fan, and ever since that time the young bloods of the Austrian Court, who have already bagged fans for their own women, have been shooting right and left for the Empress’s sake. ”

“ The vogue of fans became general during the first half of the eighteenth century, when fan-painting was a most lucrative profession. The sculptor Nollekens tells us that when his wife was a girl, her father’s intimate friend Goupy (a well-known water-colour draughtsman who died in London in 1763) was considered the most eminent of the fan-painters, and that fan-painting was then so fashionable that the family of ‘Athenian Stuart’ (so called on account of his exquisite studies of Athens) placed him as a pupil to Goupy, conceiving that by so doing they had made his fortune ”

“ The beautiful lace fan contributed by M. Duvelleroy suggests almost infinite possibilities in the treatment of this charming material; it is designed on a convention essentially modern; it is the art of to-day, of the present moment, owing practically nothing to the past, and representing that revolt against tradition, which, for good or for ill, has come to be one of the most significant features of modern art. ”

“ The Chinese have exhausted every species of ingenuity in the construction of fans of an outré character. The ‘broken fan,’ a curious trick, is to all intents and purposes a simple folding-fan, and opened from left to right presents no feature uncommon. On being opened to the reverse, the whole fan appears to fall to pieces, each bone, with the part attached, being separated from the other as though the connecting strings were broken: the principle is extremely simple, but the effect is surprising. ”

“ Its primal cause is to be found in the overpowering insistence of the sun’s rays, and the sense of grateful relief afforded by shade and disturbance of the air. To discover its origin we must look back, beyond the age of legendary lore, to actual mythology, when we find representations of the Puranic snake gods of India with the sacred umbrella over their heads, attended by Cherubim waving the fan and the fly-flap. Similarly we find the sacred five- or seven-headed cobra itself assuming the office of sunshade, uprearing its hood to form a canopy for Buddha or for the Hindoo gods. ”

“ Another bridal-fan of Marie-Antoinette has on the obverse an allegorical composition, in which the dauphine, enthroned upon a cloud, is about to sign the marriage contract which Cupid lays before her, while Hymen hovers above: on the left, the Graces weave garlands of roses; on the right, Midas and Discordia are banished to the regions of obscurity.
On the reverse, Louis and his young bride appear walking in a wood, guided by Cupid, blind, and bearing a torch. Both these subjects have been attributed to Fragonard; they are, however, most certainly by two different hands. ”

“ The word punkhá, or pankhá, from pankh, a feather, a bird, is a generic term applied in India to all fans, pankhi meaning a small fan. This derivation serves as an indication of the early use of the plumed fan in India, which divides honours with the palm-leaf fan in point of antiquity, and doubtless also as suggesting a similarity between the beating of a bird’s wings and the movement of the fan. ”