HENRI-CHARLES GUÉRARD Azor with Bells and Whistles, Preparatory Study for a Fan, n.d. Gouache on silk. Collection of John and Lucy Buchanan
Creating Cool
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Nineteenth Century Parisian Fans at Dixon Story & Photos Courtesy of Dixon Gallery and Gardens
n nineteenth century Paris, collecting painted fans for their own personal every perfectly-accessorized collection, starting with their purchase of a woman, regardless of age, had Guérard gouache painting in the shape of a fan. Light, portable, easily a fan called Azor with Bells and Whistles, packed, and particularly Preparatory Study for a Fan in 1992. Guérard suitable for warm climates remained a sentimental favorite, and he is (and overheated rooms such by far the best represented artist in their as theaters, ballrooms, and collection, but fan designs by Georges Auriol, opera houses in cold climates), folding fans Ernest Ange Duez, Auguste-Louis Lepère, spread rapidly throughout European markets. and others are also present. Millions of fans manufactured in or imported into the French capital every year were hand When Buchanan passed away in 2011, the JEAN-LOUIS FORAIN Dancer with a Rose, 1885-90 decorated by artists. In the late nineteenth Dixon purchased a large and beautiful pastel, Watercolor on linen. Collection of Dixon Gallery century, a group of painters, influenced by and Gardens Jacques Émile Blanche’s 1890 Portrait of the vogue of Japanese art and culture, began Eugenia Huici Arguedas de Errázuriz in his adapting the fan format when creating works on paper. Once evidence of memory. The alluring subject holds a fan of impressive dimension as she sits how quickly fans found buyers became apparent, artists looked to them on a daybed and gazes distantly, a fitting tribute for someone so inspired for income when large-scale paintings on canvas weren’t being purchased by the fan format. In 2013, Kevin Sharp, current director of the Dixon, and as quickly. Parisian artists tried their hand at the art form, but only a few Lucy Buchanan began discussing the possibility of an exhibition on French decided to pursue the fan shape as their specialty. painted fans. They hoped to organize a show that would include examples from the Dixon and Buchanan collections, the Forain pastel John bought for Henri-Charles Guérard was the most prolific Parisian fan specialist of his the Dixon in 1987, the Blanche portrait the Dixon acquired in his memory in age, producing hundreds of designs. In comparison, Edgar Degas is thought 2012, and other key loans to round out the story. to have executed slightly fewer than twenty-five. Other well-known artists of this time period created exceptionally beautiful fans, including one of Henri Guérard and the Phenomenon of the Artist’s Fan in France, 1875 – the favorite painters in the Dixon’s collection, Jean-Louis Forain. Forain 1900 opens on July 31st and will be on display through October 9, 2016. painted ballet scenes on fans designed for women to carry to the ballet. But The exhibit examines artists’ fascination with the form with a selection of the majority of Forain’s fan-shaped creations, like those of other painters, Japanese fans, in addition to Guérard’s extensive contributions and works were conceived as fine art for the walls of boudoirs or salons. Regardless by Degas, Paul Gauguin, and Camille Pissarro. The majority of the 44 works of how the object was displayed, the phenomenon of the painted fan in late in the exhibition are drawn from the collection of Lucy and John Buchanan nineteenth-century France lived at the confounding Parisian intersection of as well as the holdings of the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, which the art, design, commerce, history, cultural appropriation, and gender. Buchanans had a hand in shaping. Robert Flynn Johnson, Curator Emeritus of the Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts, part of the Fine Arts John Buchanan was the director of the Dixon Gallery and Gardens from Museums of San Francisco, serves as guest curator of the exhibition. This 1987 to 1993. One of his more notable museum purchases as director was exhibition is organized by the Dixon Gallery and Gardens. A beautiful and a beautiful pastel by Jean-Louis Forain called Woman Breathing in Flowers informative catalogue of the same name will be available for purchase at (ca. 1883). Inspired by this purchase, Buchanan and his wife, Lucy, began the Dixon.
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