A Painting in the Palm of Your Hand: 18th-Century Painted Fans

5. brisé fan with a fortune teller and chinoiserie motifs probably dutch, c. 1700–1725 gouache on ivory blades, silk ribbon (later), tortoiseshell, paste gems (later), and brass loop (later) 1985.r.516

10. folding fan with a scene of a visit to the wetnurse french, c. 1780 goauche on double silk leaf, brass, metallic thread, tortoiseshell, gilding, mother-ofpearl, and paste gems (some missing) 1985.r.490

15. folding fan with jacob meeting rachel by the well dutch, c. 1760s–1770s gouache and watercolor on single parchment leaf, mother-of-pearl, gilding, and paste gems 1985.r.504

6. louis-jacques goussier (french, 1722–1799) and defehrt (french, active mid–late 18th century) “fan maker: the painting of fan leaves (eventailliste: peinture des feuilles)” engraving from “receuil de planches,” a supplement of denis diderot and jean le rond d’alembert’s “encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers” (paris, 1765) lent by special collections, dallas public library

1. folding fan with a courting scene and landscape vignettes probably dutch or english, c. 1770s gouache and watercolor on single parchment leaf, ivory, gilding, mother-of-pearl, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.518

11. folding fan with a scene of card players in a fashionable interior french, c. 1740s–1750s gouche and watercolor on single vellum leaf, ivory or bone, gilding, gouache, silk, and brass 1985.r.494

7. folding fan with “adonis led by cupids to venus,” after francesco albani mount, italian, c. 1720s–1730s; guards and sticks, possibly french, c. 1740s–1750s gouache and watercolor on double vellum leaf, mother-of-pearl, gilding, and paste gem (later) 1985.r.496

12. folding fan with “the setting of the sun,” after françois boucher french, after 1753 gouache and watercolor on single vellum leaf, ivory, gilding, gouache, mother-of-pearl, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.495

3. folding fan with a courting scene and musical trophies french or german, c. 1770s–1780s gouache on double silk leaf, brass, metallic thread, mother-of-pearl, gilding, and paste gems 1985.r.509

8. brisé fan with a scene of the “comédie italienne” (italian comedians) french, c. 1700–1725 gouache on ivory or bone blades, silk ribbon (later), gilding, motherof-pearl, and brass 1985.r. 491

13. folding fan with “rinaldo and armida,” after françois boucher french, c. 1734–1750 gouache and watercolor on double vellum and paper leaf, mother-ofpearl, gilding, and paste gems 1985.r.517

21. folding fan with jephthah meeting his daughter probably english, c. 1740s–1750s gouache and watercolor on single vellum leaf, ivory, gilding, gouache, paper foil, and paste gems 1985.r.498

26. folding fan with views of the monuments of rome italian, c. 1780s–1790s gouache and watercolor on double vellum leaf, bone, gilding, and paste gems 1985.r.519

9. folding fan with a view of the pont neuf french, c. 1755–1760 gouache and watercolor on double vellum leaf, ivory, gilding, gouache, mother-of-pearl, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.508

17. folding fan with a classical subject, possibly an allegory of marriage possibly french or dutch, c. 1750s–1760s gouache on single vellum leaf, ivory, gilding, goauche, and brass 1985.r.503

22. folding fan with rebecca and eliezer at the well probably dutch, c. 1740s gouache and watercolor on single vellum leaf, mother-of-pearl, gilding, gouache, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.501

23. folding fan with grisaille scenes probably french or spanish, c. 1780s gouache on double silk leaf, brass, metallic thread, bone or ivory (stained), gilding, mother-of-pearl, and paste gems 1985.r.502 24. folding fan with a pastoral scene probably french, 1750–1760s gouache and watercolor on double vellum and paper leaf, motherof-pearl, gilding, brass, and paste gems (one missing) 1985.r.514

19. folding fan with a pastoral scene possibly french or german, c. 1740s–1750s gouache on double vellum and paper leaf, mother-of-pearl, gilding, goauche, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.507

27. folding fan with portrait medallions of marie antoinette and louis xvi french, after 1786 gouache and watercolor on double silk leaf, brass, silver, metallic thread, ivory, gilding, silver foil, and paste gems 1985.r.513

18. folding fan with a pastoral scene probably french, c. 1740s–1750s gouache and watercolor on double vellum and paper leaf, ivory, gilding, gouache, mother-ofpearl, and brass 1985.r.505

14. folding fan with an old testament subject, possibly adonijah before solomon probably dutch or english, c. 1770s gouache on double silk leaf, brass, metallic thread, vellum, motherof-pearl, gilding, ivory, glass or rock crystal, paste gems (later), and brass loop (later) 1985.r.500

18th-Century Painted Fans from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection

16. folding fan with the birth of venus probably french, c. 1770s–1780s gouache on single silk leaf, straw, brass, metallic thread, bone, gilding, mother-ofpearl, and paste gems 1985.r.492

4. folding fan with a chinoiserie scene, portraits, pastoral f igures, and still lifes french, c. 1780s gouache on double silk leaf, brass, metallic thread and netting, ivory, gilding, motherof-pearl, glass or rock crystal, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.521

25. brisé fan with a scene of an outdoor party (detail) french or dutch, c. 1700–1725 gouache on ivory blades, silk ribbon (later), gilding, tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl, and brass 1985.r.493

2. folding fan with a pastoral scene on a “domino” ground french, c. 1770s–1780s gouache and watercolor on double paper leaf, ivory, gilding, motherof-pearl, and paste gems 1985.r.510

20. folding fan with a pastoral scene dutch, c. 1770s gouache and watercolor on single vellum leaf, brass, mother-of-pearl, gilding, and paste gem 1985.r.512

north harwood st dallas tx 75 2 0 1 1 71 7

DallasMuseumofArt.org

A Painting in the Palm of Your Hand: 18th-Century Painted Fans from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art. Support provided, in part, by a grant from the Fan Association of North America. Air transportation provided by American Airlines.

The Dallas Museum of Art is supported in part by the generosity of Museum members and donors and by the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas/Office of Cultural Affairs and the Texas Commission on the Arts.

All fans: Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection Cover: Folding fan with views of the monuments of Rome, Italian, c. 1780s–1790s, gouache and watercolor on double vellum leaf, bone, gilding, and paste gems, Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.519

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June 17–October 14, 2007

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1747 description of the art of fan painting in The London Tradesman dismissed it as “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 Colors is more necessary than a polite Invention; Though now and then, if he is able to sketch out some Emblematical Figure, or some pretty quaint Whim, he has a Chance to please better than one who is not so adroit.”1 Despite this writer’s estimation, the exquisite craftsmanship of the 18th-century fans that have survived make it clear that sophisticated consumers sought more than a simple “Glare of Colors.” The best fans demonstrate a delicacy of handling that rivals the work of a miniaturist, ingenuity in adapting well-known paintings to the unusual format of a fan leaf, and a strong sense of aesthetic harmony in uniting a figural subject with its decorative embellishments.

The talents of the best fan makers did not go unnoticed by contemporary observers.

In March 1781, the novelist and playwright Fanny Burney recorded in her journal a visit to the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, which was preceded by a visit to “see some beautiful fans painted by Poggi, from designs of Sir Joshua, Angelica [Kaufmann], [Benjamin] West, and [Giovanni Battista] Cipriani, on leather. They are, indeed, more delightful than can be imagined.” In Paris, the baronne d’Oberkirch described a visit to the “hovel” of a fan maker named Méré, who “painted subjects in gouache with such skill that neither Boucher nor Watteau has ever done the like.” 2 The talented men and women who made fans in the 18th century were mostly anonymous artisans, and few names have been recorded. Though fans can often be dated based on their form, style, subject matter, or materials, they were seldom signed and are thus almost impossible to attribute to an individual craftsperson or workshop. In most cases, fans were composed of a variety of materials that were worked separately by specialized artisans and only brought together late in the manufacturing process. The component parts might have been produced in another country, or even on another continent.

Carved ivory sticks were made in India and China and imported to Europe by the hundreds of thousands in the 17th and 18th centuries, and fine Italian fan leaves painted with mythological subjects were highly desirable in the English market, where they might be mounted on locally carved sticks.

In England, fan makers had been organized in 1709 as the Worshipful Company of Fan Makers, while in France, the lucrative business was split between several guilds. The guild of comb makers and inlayers, who made all sorts of small carved goods of wood or ivory, successfully petitioned for the exclusive right to make the fan sticks. The guild of Master Painters and Sculptors (not the painters of the Académie de St. Luc, as has often been claimed) secured the right to paint fan leaves, while the guild of Master Fan Makers, or maîtres éventaillistes, was created in 1677 and granted the exclusive right to make fan leaves and assemble the finished products. Though 18th-century fans were still made entirely by hand in the workshops of skilled artisans, it is important to note that subcontracting and serial production were already essential elements of the manufacturing process.

Top, detail of checklist no. 10; bottom, detail of checklist no. 11

Detail of checklist no. 7

Nominally, fashion merchants, the marchands de mode, had the exclusive right to sell fans, but in practice, almost everyone involved in their manufacture or in the marketing of luxury goods sought opportunities to reach consumers directly. Fans could be found for sale in milliner or jewelers’ shops, or in the glamorous boutiques of luxury merchants, the marchands merciers. The marchands merciers also stocked the component parts of fans—guards, sticks, and leaves—in order to allow a measure of customization for their clientele.3 Fans could also be purchased directly (though illegally) from fan makers, and were even sold on the streets by peddlers, who often lingered around churches, where female customers were likely to congregate.

Clearly, there was a vast difference between the fan purchased at the boutique of a marchand mercier in the rue St. Honoré or in the arcades of the Palais Royale, the premier destinations for luxury shopping in Paris, and the fan sold by a peddler on the street. Fans made with cheaper materials (paper or silk leaves rather than vellum; bone or wood sticks rather than ivory) or fans painted by less skilled artisans could be sold at a more affordable price. Elaborate fans could easily cost fifty to one hundred livres (at a time when a linen shirt cost about ten livres in Paris), whereas simpler fans made of wood and decorated with some ivory or gilding might cost six livres, or even less. In England, the cheapest fans, imported from China, were priced at three pence in 1750, approximately what a skilled workman could earn in one hour.4 In other words, during the course of the 18th century fans became an affordable luxury, something that almost anyone with a small amount of disposable income and a desire to imitate the fashionable habits of the aristocracy might acquire.

The article “Luxe,” or luxury, in Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie asserts that “[w]ithout an abundance of luxuries, men of all ranks believe themselves to be poor.” If this appears a mere truism to us today, it was to 18th-century observers a sign of radical change overtaking their society. Luxury itself was nothing new, of course. It had long been a crucial mode of social differentiation, enforced by sumptuary laws and the marketplace. Access to luxury goods was the prerogative of the aristocracy, as was the possession of the requisite knowledge to use these goods: the elusive rules of fashion. The fan, for instance, was surrounded by a code of genteel use that gave rise both to deportment manuals instructing young women in the “Six Positions of the Fan” and to satires, such as Joseph Addison’s mock advertisement in The Spectator for a “Fan Academy” to train “young women in the exercise of the fan, according to the most fashionable airs and motions that are now practiced at court.”5 During the 16th and 17th centuries, new and exotic goods being imported to Europe— silk and porcelain from China, calico fabrics and tea from India, coffee from Africa— became enormously fashionable in the courts of Europe. Over the course of the following century, these same wares gradually became accessible, and then quickly indispensable, to consumers at lower social echelons. Louis Sébastien Mercier, the great chronicler of daily life in Paris at the end of the ancien régime, recorded his astonishment at the unprecedented expansion of luxury in his time. “The Parisian who does not have an income of ten thousand livres,” he wrote, “ordinarily has neither bedsheets, nor towels nor undershirts; but he has a repeater watch, mirrors, silk stockings, lace.”6 Mercier could have added fans to the list of small extravagances that had recently been adopted

by working-class consumers. Cissie Fairchilds, in her research on “populuxe” goods in the 18th century, tracked the growing market for fans. In 1725 only about five percent of lower-class households in Paris owned a fan; by 1785 that number had increased more than sixfold, to nearly thirty-five percent. Similar patterns of spectacular growth can be seen in the ownership of umbrellas, snuff boxes, and gold watches, the kind of accessible luxuries that were the visible markers of gentility.7 The fan had completed its conquest of polite society, but the very existence of published deportment manuals teaching its proper use invites the question of whether the fan still retained its aristocratic associations. Mercier’s professed amazement at the finery of working-class Parisians in no way implies that he was deceived as to their actual social position. Like their watches, silk stockings, and lace, fans had become the kind of “aspirational purchase” that defined upward mobility for lower-class consumers.

Given this market trajectory, it is not surprising to note that fans began to lose their cultural caché at the end of the 18th century. The large, elaborately worked and delicately painted fans of the mid-century period gradually gave way to smaller fans with more restrained decoration, in keeping with the prevailing neoclassical taste, and painted fans fell entirely out of favor at the end of the century. New accessories such as the cashmere shawl replaced fans as the markers of fashion and luxury, as can be appreciated by a survey of female portraiture of the time. When painted fans eventually came back into vogue in the mid-19th century, it was under the banner of ancien régime revivalism. In both style and subject matter, the fan makers of the 19th century closely followed 18thcentury precedents, creating dutiful pastiches of the famous paintings of Jean Antoine Watteau and François Boucher. Though nostalgia for the aristocratic tastes of the past lingers even today in the appreciation of 18th-century fans, our richer understanding of the social and material conditions under which they were produced gives us a broader appreciation of their place in an economy of taste, fashion, and luxury that closely resembles our own.

Heather MacDonald The Lillian and James H. Clark Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture Dallas Museum of Art

1. R. Campbell, The London Tradesman (London: T. Gardner, 1747) 211, quoted in Bertha de Vere Green, A Collector’s Guide to Fans over the Ages (London: Frederick Muller, 1975), 199.

2. Quoted in Françoise de Perthuis and Vincent Meylan, Éventails (Paris: Hermé, 1989), 44.

3. Carolyn Sargentson, “The manufacture and marketing of luxury goods: the marchands merciers of late 17th- and 18th-century Paris,” in Luxury Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Régime Paris: Studies in the History of the Skilled Workforce, eds. Robert Fox and Anthony Turner (London: Ashgate, 1998), 112–113 and n. 63.

4. Ivison Wheatley, The Language of the Fan: an exhibition at Fairfax House, York, July 1st to October 31st, 1989 (York: York Civic Trust, 1989), 10.

5. The Spectator 102 (June 27, 1711).

6. Louis Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris, ed. Jean-Claude Bonnet, 2 vols. (Paris: Mercure de France, 1994), 1088.

7. Cissie Fairchilds, “The production and marketing of populuxe goods in eighteenth-century Paris,” in Consumption and the World of Goods, eds. John Brewer and Roy Porter (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 230. Fairchilds’ statistics are based on household inventories.

Detail of checklist no. 21

Top, detail of checklist no. 18; bottom, detail of checklist no. 17

A

1747 description of the art of fan painting in The London Tradesman dismissed it as “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 Colors is more necessary than a polite Invention; Though now and then, if he is able to sketch out some Emblematical Figure, or some pretty quaint Whim, he has a Chance to please better than one who is not so adroit.”1 Despite this writer’s estimation, the exquisite craftsmanship of the 18th-century fans that have survived make it clear that sophisticated consumers sought more than a simple “Glare of Colors.” The best fans demonstrate a delicacy of handling that rivals the work of a miniaturist, ingenuity in adapting well-known paintings to the unusual format of a fan leaf, and a strong sense of aesthetic harmony in uniting a figural subject with its decorative embellishments.

The talents of the best fan makers did not go unnoticed by contemporary observers.

In March 1781, the novelist and playwright Fanny Burney recorded in her journal a visit to the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, which was preceded by a visit to “see some beautiful fans painted by Poggi, from designs of Sir Joshua, Angelica [Kaufmann], [Benjamin] West, and [Giovanni Battista] Cipriani, on leather. They are, indeed, more delightful than can be imagined.” In Paris, the baronne d’Oberkirch described a visit to the “hovel” of a fan maker named Méré, who “painted subjects in gouache with such skill that neither Boucher nor Watteau has ever done the like.” 2 The talented men and women who made fans in the 18th century were mostly anonymous artisans, and few names have been recorded. Though fans can often be dated based on their form, style, subject matter, or materials, they were seldom signed and are thus almost impossible to attribute to an individual craftsperson or workshop. In most cases, fans were composed of a variety of materials that were worked separately by specialized artisans and only brought together late in the manufacturing process. The component parts might have been produced in another country, or even on another continent.

Carved ivory sticks were made in India and China and imported to Europe by the hundreds of thousands in the 17th and 18th centuries, and fine Italian fan leaves painted with mythological subjects were highly desirable in the English market, where they might be mounted on locally carved sticks.

In England, fan makers had been organized in 1709 as the Worshipful Company of Fan Makers, while in France, the lucrative business was split between several guilds. The guild of comb makers and inlayers, who made all sorts of small carved goods of wood or ivory, successfully petitioned for the exclusive right to make the fan sticks. The guild of Master Painters and Sculptors (not the painters of the Académie de St. Luc, as has often been claimed) secured the right to paint fan leaves, while the guild of Master Fan Makers, or maîtres éventaillistes, was created in 1677 and granted the exclusive right to make fan leaves and assemble the finished products. Though 18th-century fans were still made entirely by hand in the workshops of skilled artisans, it is important to note that subcontracting and serial production were already essential elements of the manufacturing process.

Top, detail of checklist no. 10; bottom, detail of checklist no. 11

Detail of checklist no. 7

Nominally, fashion merchants, the marchands de mode, had the exclusive right to sell fans, but in practice, almost everyone involved in their manufacture or in the marketing of luxury goods sought opportunities to reach consumers directly. Fans could be found for sale in milliner or jewelers’ shops, or in the glamorous boutiques of luxury merchants, the marchands merciers. The marchands merciers also stocked the component parts of fans—guards, sticks, and leaves—in order to allow a measure of customization for their clientele.3 Fans could also be purchased directly (though illegally) from fan makers, and were even sold on the streets by peddlers, who often lingered around churches, where female customers were likely to congregate.

Clearly, there was a vast difference between the fan purchased at the boutique of a marchand mercier in the rue St. Honoré or in the arcades of the Palais Royale, the premier destinations for luxury shopping in Paris, and the fan sold by a peddler on the street. Fans made with cheaper materials (paper or silk leaves rather than vellum; bone or wood sticks rather than ivory) or fans painted by less skilled artisans could be sold at a more affordable price. Elaborate fans could easily cost fifty to one hundred livres (at a time when a linen shirt cost about ten livres in Paris), whereas simpler fans made of wood and decorated with some ivory or gilding might cost six livres, or even less. In England, the cheapest fans, imported from China, were priced at three pence in 1750, approximately what a skilled workman could earn in one hour.4 In other words, during the course of the 18th century fans became an affordable luxury, something that almost anyone with a small amount of disposable income and a desire to imitate the fashionable habits of the aristocracy might acquire.

The article “Luxe,” or luxury, in Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie asserts that “[w]ithout an abundance of luxuries, men of all ranks believe themselves to be poor.” If this appears a mere truism to us today, it was to 18th-century observers a sign of radical change overtaking their society. Luxury itself was nothing new, of course. It had long been a crucial mode of social differentiation, enforced by sumptuary laws and the marketplace. Access to luxury goods was the prerogative of the aristocracy, as was the possession of the requisite knowledge to use these goods: the elusive rules of fashion. The fan, for instance, was surrounded by a code of genteel use that gave rise both to deportment manuals instructing young women in the “Six Positions of the Fan” and to satires, such as Joseph Addison’s mock advertisement in The Spectator for a “Fan Academy” to train “young women in the exercise of the fan, according to the most fashionable airs and motions that are now practiced at court.”5 During the 16th and 17th centuries, new and exotic goods being imported to Europe— silk and porcelain from China, calico fabrics and tea from India, coffee from Africa— became enormously fashionable in the courts of Europe. Over the course of the following century, these same wares gradually became accessible, and then quickly indispensable, to consumers at lower social echelons. Louis Sébastien Mercier, the great chronicler of daily life in Paris at the end of the ancien régime, recorded his astonishment at the unprecedented expansion of luxury in his time. “The Parisian who does not have an income of ten thousand livres,” he wrote, “ordinarily has neither bedsheets, nor towels nor undershirts; but he has a repeater watch, mirrors, silk stockings, lace.”6 Mercier could have added fans to the list of small extravagances that had recently been adopted

by working-class consumers. Cissie Fairchilds, in her research on “populuxe” goods in the 18th century, tracked the growing market for fans. In 1725 only about five percent of lower-class households in Paris owned a fan; by 1785 that number had increased more than sixfold, to nearly thirty-five percent. Similar patterns of spectacular growth can be seen in the ownership of umbrellas, snuff boxes, and gold watches, the kind of accessible luxuries that were the visible markers of gentility.7 The fan had completed its conquest of polite society, but the very existence of published deportment manuals teaching its proper use invites the question of whether the fan still retained its aristocratic associations. Mercier’s professed amazement at the finery of working-class Parisians in no way implies that he was deceived as to their actual social position. Like their watches, silk stockings, and lace, fans had become the kind of “aspirational purchase” that defined upward mobility for lower-class consumers.

Given this market trajectory, it is not surprising to note that fans began to lose their cultural caché at the end of the 18th century. The large, elaborately worked and delicately painted fans of the mid-century period gradually gave way to smaller fans with more restrained decoration, in keeping with the prevailing neoclassical taste, and painted fans fell entirely out of favor at the end of the century. New accessories such as the cashmere shawl replaced fans as the markers of fashion and luxury, as can be appreciated by a survey of female portraiture of the time. When painted fans eventually came back into vogue in the mid-19th century, it was under the banner of ancien régime revivalism. In both style and subject matter, the fan makers of the 19th century closely followed 18thcentury precedents, creating dutiful pastiches of the famous paintings of Jean Antoine Watteau and François Boucher. Though nostalgia for the aristocratic tastes of the past lingers even today in the appreciation of 18th-century fans, our richer understanding of the social and material conditions under which they were produced gives us a broader appreciation of their place in an economy of taste, fashion, and luxury that closely resembles our own.

Heather MacDonald The Lillian and James H. Clark Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture Dallas Museum of Art

1. R. Campbell, The London Tradesman (London: T. Gardner, 1747) 211, quoted in Bertha de Vere Green, A Collector’s Guide to Fans over the Ages (London: Frederick Muller, 1975), 199.

2. Quoted in Françoise de Perthuis and Vincent Meylan, Éventails (Paris: Hermé, 1989), 44.

3. Carolyn Sargentson, “The manufacture and marketing of luxury goods: the marchands merciers of late 17th- and 18th-century Paris,” in Luxury Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Régime Paris: Studies in the History of the Skilled Workforce, eds. Robert Fox and Anthony Turner (London: Ashgate, 1998), 112–113 and n. 63.

4. Ivison Wheatley, The Language of the Fan: an exhibition at Fairfax House, York, July 1st to October 31st, 1989 (York: York Civic Trust, 1989), 10.

5. The Spectator 102 (June 27, 1711).

6. Louis Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris, ed. Jean-Claude Bonnet, 2 vols. (Paris: Mercure de France, 1994), 1088.

7. Cissie Fairchilds, “The production and marketing of populuxe goods in eighteenth-century Paris,” in Consumption and the World of Goods, eds. John Brewer and Roy Porter (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 230. Fairchilds’ statistics are based on household inventories.

Detail of checklist no. 21

Top, detail of checklist no. 18; bottom, detail of checklist no. 17

A

1747 description of the art of fan painting in The London Tradesman dismissed it as “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 Colors is more necessary than a polite Invention; Though now and then, if he is able to sketch out some Emblematical Figure, or some pretty quaint Whim, he has a Chance to please better than one who is not so adroit.”1 Despite this writer’s estimation, the exquisite craftsmanship of the 18th-century fans that have survived make it clear that sophisticated consumers sought more than a simple “Glare of Colors.” The best fans demonstrate a delicacy of handling that rivals the work of a miniaturist, ingenuity in adapting well-known paintings to the unusual format of a fan leaf, and a strong sense of aesthetic harmony in uniting a figural subject with its decorative embellishments.

The talents of the best fan makers did not go unnoticed by contemporary observers.

In March 1781, the novelist and playwright Fanny Burney recorded in her journal a visit to the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, which was preceded by a visit to “see some beautiful fans painted by Poggi, from designs of Sir Joshua, Angelica [Kaufmann], [Benjamin] West, and [Giovanni Battista] Cipriani, on leather. They are, indeed, more delightful than can be imagined.” In Paris, the baronne d’Oberkirch described a visit to the “hovel” of a fan maker named Méré, who “painted subjects in gouache with such skill that neither Boucher nor Watteau has ever done the like.” 2 The talented men and women who made fans in the 18th century were mostly anonymous artisans, and few names have been recorded. Though fans can often be dated based on their form, style, subject matter, or materials, they were seldom signed and are thus almost impossible to attribute to an individual craftsperson or workshop. In most cases, fans were composed of a variety of materials that were worked separately by specialized artisans and only brought together late in the manufacturing process. The component parts might have been produced in another country, or even on another continent.

Carved ivory sticks were made in India and China and imported to Europe by the hundreds of thousands in the 17th and 18th centuries, and fine Italian fan leaves painted with mythological subjects were highly desirable in the English market, where they might be mounted on locally carved sticks.

In England, fan makers had been organized in 1709 as the Worshipful Company of Fan Makers, while in France, the lucrative business was split between several guilds. The guild of comb makers and inlayers, who made all sorts of small carved goods of wood or ivory, successfully petitioned for the exclusive right to make the fan sticks. The guild of Master Painters and Sculptors (not the painters of the Académie de St. Luc, as has often been claimed) secured the right to paint fan leaves, while the guild of Master Fan Makers, or maîtres éventaillistes, was created in 1677 and granted the exclusive right to make fan leaves and assemble the finished products. Though 18th-century fans were still made entirely by hand in the workshops of skilled artisans, it is important to note that subcontracting and serial production were already essential elements of the manufacturing process.

Top, detail of checklist no. 10; bottom, detail of checklist no. 11

Detail of checklist no. 7

Nominally, fashion merchants, the marchands de mode, had the exclusive right to sell fans, but in practice, almost everyone involved in their manufacture or in the marketing of luxury goods sought opportunities to reach consumers directly. Fans could be found for sale in milliner or jewelers’ shops, or in the glamorous boutiques of luxury merchants, the marchands merciers. The marchands merciers also stocked the component parts of fans—guards, sticks, and leaves—in order to allow a measure of customization for their clientele.3 Fans could also be purchased directly (though illegally) from fan makers, and were even sold on the streets by peddlers, who often lingered around churches, where female customers were likely to congregate.

Clearly, there was a vast difference between the fan purchased at the boutique of a marchand mercier in the rue St. Honoré or in the arcades of the Palais Royale, the premier destinations for luxury shopping in Paris, and the fan sold by a peddler on the street. Fans made with cheaper materials (paper or silk leaves rather than vellum; bone or wood sticks rather than ivory) or fans painted by less skilled artisans could be sold at a more affordable price. Elaborate fans could easily cost fifty to one hundred livres (at a time when a linen shirt cost about ten livres in Paris), whereas simpler fans made of wood and decorated with some ivory or gilding might cost six livres, or even less. In England, the cheapest fans, imported from China, were priced at three pence in 1750, approximately what a skilled workman could earn in one hour.4 In other words, during the course of the 18th century fans became an affordable luxury, something that almost anyone with a small amount of disposable income and a desire to imitate the fashionable habits of the aristocracy might acquire.

The article “Luxe,” or luxury, in Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie asserts that “[w]ithout an abundance of luxuries, men of all ranks believe themselves to be poor.” If this appears a mere truism to us today, it was to 18th-century observers a sign of radical change overtaking their society. Luxury itself was nothing new, of course. It had long been a crucial mode of social differentiation, enforced by sumptuary laws and the marketplace. Access to luxury goods was the prerogative of the aristocracy, as was the possession of the requisite knowledge to use these goods: the elusive rules of fashion. The fan, for instance, was surrounded by a code of genteel use that gave rise both to deportment manuals instructing young women in the “Six Positions of the Fan” and to satires, such as Joseph Addison’s mock advertisement in The Spectator for a “Fan Academy” to train “young women in the exercise of the fan, according to the most fashionable airs and motions that are now practiced at court.”5 During the 16th and 17th centuries, new and exotic goods being imported to Europe— silk and porcelain from China, calico fabrics and tea from India, coffee from Africa— became enormously fashionable in the courts of Europe. Over the course of the following century, these same wares gradually became accessible, and then quickly indispensable, to consumers at lower social echelons. Louis Sébastien Mercier, the great chronicler of daily life in Paris at the end of the ancien régime, recorded his astonishment at the unprecedented expansion of luxury in his time. “The Parisian who does not have an income of ten thousand livres,” he wrote, “ordinarily has neither bedsheets, nor towels nor undershirts; but he has a repeater watch, mirrors, silk stockings, lace.”6 Mercier could have added fans to the list of small extravagances that had recently been adopted

by working-class consumers. Cissie Fairchilds, in her research on “populuxe” goods in the 18th century, tracked the growing market for fans. In 1725 only about five percent of lower-class households in Paris owned a fan; by 1785 that number had increased more than sixfold, to nearly thirty-five percent. Similar patterns of spectacular growth can be seen in the ownership of umbrellas, snuff boxes, and gold watches, the kind of accessible luxuries that were the visible markers of gentility.7 The fan had completed its conquest of polite society, but the very existence of published deportment manuals teaching its proper use invites the question of whether the fan still retained its aristocratic associations. Mercier’s professed amazement at the finery of working-class Parisians in no way implies that he was deceived as to their actual social position. Like their watches, silk stockings, and lace, fans had become the kind of “aspirational purchase” that defined upward mobility for lower-class consumers.

Given this market trajectory, it is not surprising to note that fans began to lose their cultural caché at the end of the 18th century. The large, elaborately worked and delicately painted fans of the mid-century period gradually gave way to smaller fans with more restrained decoration, in keeping with the prevailing neoclassical taste, and painted fans fell entirely out of favor at the end of the century. New accessories such as the cashmere shawl replaced fans as the markers of fashion and luxury, as can be appreciated by a survey of female portraiture of the time. When painted fans eventually came back into vogue in the mid-19th century, it was under the banner of ancien régime revivalism. In both style and subject matter, the fan makers of the 19th century closely followed 18thcentury precedents, creating dutiful pastiches of the famous paintings of Jean Antoine Watteau and François Boucher. Though nostalgia for the aristocratic tastes of the past lingers even today in the appreciation of 18th-century fans, our richer understanding of the social and material conditions under which they were produced gives us a broader appreciation of their place in an economy of taste, fashion, and luxury that closely resembles our own.

Heather MacDonald The Lillian and James H. Clark Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture Dallas Museum of Art

1. R. Campbell, The London Tradesman (London: T. Gardner, 1747) 211, quoted in Bertha de Vere Green, A Collector’s Guide to Fans over the Ages (London: Frederick Muller, 1975), 199.

2. Quoted in Françoise de Perthuis and Vincent Meylan, Éventails (Paris: Hermé, 1989), 44.

3. Carolyn Sargentson, “The manufacture and marketing of luxury goods: the marchands merciers of late 17th- and 18th-century Paris,” in Luxury Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Régime Paris: Studies in the History of the Skilled Workforce, eds. Robert Fox and Anthony Turner (London: Ashgate, 1998), 112–113 and n. 63.

4. Ivison Wheatley, The Language of the Fan: an exhibition at Fairfax House, York, July 1st to October 31st, 1989 (York: York Civic Trust, 1989), 10.

5. The Spectator 102 (June 27, 1711).

6. Louis Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris, ed. Jean-Claude Bonnet, 2 vols. (Paris: Mercure de France, 1994), 1088.

7. Cissie Fairchilds, “The production and marketing of populuxe goods in eighteenth-century Paris,” in Consumption and the World of Goods, eds. John Brewer and Roy Porter (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 230. Fairchilds’ statistics are based on household inventories.

Detail of checklist no. 21

Top, detail of checklist no. 18; bottom, detail of checklist no. 17

5. brisé fan with a fortune teller and chinoiserie motifs probably dutch, c. 1700–1725 gouache on ivory blades, silk ribbon (later), tortoiseshell, paste gems (later), and brass loop (later) 1985.r.516

10. folding fan with a scene of a visit to the wetnurse french, c. 1780 goauche on double silk leaf, brass, metallic thread, tortoiseshell, gilding, mother-ofpearl, and paste gems (some missing) 1985.r.490

15. folding fan with jacob meeting rachel by the well dutch, c. 1760s–1770s gouache and watercolor on single parchment leaf, mother-of-pearl, gilding, and paste gems 1985.r.504

6. louis-jacques goussier (french, 1722–1799) and defehrt (french, active mid–late 18th century) “fan maker: the painting of fan leaves (eventailliste: peinture des feuilles)” engraving from “receuil de planches,” a supplement of denis diderot and jean le rond d’alembert’s “encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers” (paris, 1765) lent by special collections, dallas public library

1. folding fan with a courting scene and landscape vignettes probably dutch or english, c. 1770s gouache and watercolor on single parchment leaf, ivory, gilding, mother-of-pearl, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.518

11. folding fan with a scene of card players in a fashionable interior french, c. 1740s–1750s gouche and watercolor on single vellum leaf, ivory or bone, gilding, gouache, silk, and brass 1985.r.494

7. folding fan with “adonis led by cupids to venus,” after francesco albani mount, italian, c. 1720s–1730s; guards and sticks, possibly french, c. 1740s–1750s gouache and watercolor on double vellum leaf, mother-of-pearl, gilding, and paste gem (later) 1985.r.496

12. folding fan with “the setting of the sun,” after françois boucher french, after 1753 gouache and watercolor on single vellum leaf, ivory, gilding, gouache, mother-of-pearl, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.495

3. folding fan with a courting scene and musical trophies french or german, c. 1770s–1780s gouache on double silk leaf, brass, metallic thread, mother-of-pearl, gilding, and paste gems 1985.r.509

8. brisé fan with a scene of the “comédie italienne” (italian comedians) french, c. 1700–1725 gouache on ivory or bone blades, silk ribbon (later), gilding, motherof-pearl, and brass 1985.r. 491

13. folding fan with “rinaldo and armida,” after françois boucher french, c. 1734–1750 gouache and watercolor on double vellum and paper leaf, mother-ofpearl, gilding, and paste gems 1985.r.517

21. folding fan with jephthah meeting his daughter probably english, c. 1740s–1750s gouache and watercolor on single vellum leaf, ivory, gilding, gouache, paper foil, and paste gems 1985.r.498

26. folding fan with views of the monuments of rome italian, c. 1780s–1790s gouache and watercolor on double vellum leaf, bone, gilding, and paste gems 1985.r.519

9. folding fan with a view of the pont neuf french, c. 1755–1760 gouache and watercolor on double vellum leaf, ivory, gilding, gouache, mother-of-pearl, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.508

17. folding fan with a classical subject, possibly an allegory of marriage possibly french or dutch, c. 1750s–1760s gouache on single vellum leaf, ivory, gilding, goauche, and brass 1985.r.503

22. folding fan with rebecca and eliezer at the well probably dutch, c. 1740s gouache and watercolor on single vellum leaf, mother-of-pearl, gilding, gouache, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.501

23. folding fan with grisaille scenes probably french or spanish, c. 1780s gouache on double silk leaf, brass, metallic thread, bone or ivory (stained), gilding, mother-of-pearl, and paste gems 1985.r.502 24. folding fan with a pastoral scene probably french, 1750–1760s gouache and watercolor on double vellum and paper leaf, motherof-pearl, gilding, brass, and paste gems (one missing) 1985.r.514

19. folding fan with a pastoral scene possibly french or german, c. 1740s–1750s gouache on double vellum and paper leaf, mother-of-pearl, gilding, goauche, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.507

27. folding fan with portrait medallions of marie antoinette and louis xvi french, after 1786 gouache and watercolor on double silk leaf, brass, silver, metallic thread, ivory, gilding, silver foil, and paste gems 1985.r.513

18. folding fan with a pastoral scene probably french, c. 1740s–1750s gouache and watercolor on double vellum and paper leaf, ivory, gilding, gouache, mother-ofpearl, and brass 1985.r.505

14. folding fan with an old testament subject, possibly adonijah before solomon probably dutch or english, c. 1770s gouache on double silk leaf, brass, metallic thread, vellum, motherof-pearl, gilding, ivory, glass or rock crystal, paste gems (later), and brass loop (later) 1985.r.500

18th-Century Painted Fans from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection

16. folding fan with the birth of venus probably french, c. 1770s–1780s gouache on single silk leaf, straw, brass, metallic thread, bone, gilding, mother-ofpearl, and paste gems 1985.r.492

4. folding fan with a chinoiserie scene, portraits, pastoral f igures, and still lifes french, c. 1780s gouache on double silk leaf, brass, metallic thread and netting, ivory, gilding, motherof-pearl, glass or rock crystal, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.521

25. brisé fan with a scene of an outdoor party (detail) french or dutch, c. 1700–1725 gouache on ivory blades, silk ribbon (later), gilding, tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl, and brass 1985.r.493

2. folding fan with a pastoral scene on a “domino” ground french, c. 1770s–1780s gouache and watercolor on double paper leaf, ivory, gilding, motherof-pearl, and paste gems 1985.r.510

20. folding fan with a pastoral scene dutch, c. 1770s gouache and watercolor on single vellum leaf, brass, mother-of-pearl, gilding, and paste gem 1985.r.512

north harwood st dallas tx 75 2 0 1 1 71 7

DallasMuseumofArt.org

A Painting in the Palm of Your Hand: 18th-Century Painted Fans from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art. Support provided, in part, by a grant from the Fan Association of North America. Air transportation provided by American Airlines.

The Dallas Museum of Art is supported in part by the generosity of Museum members and donors and by the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas/Office of Cultural Affairs and the Texas Commission on the Arts.

All fans: Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection Cover: Folding fan with views of the monuments of Rome, Italian, c. 1780s–1790s, gouache and watercolor on double vellum leaf, bone, gilding, and paste gems, Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.519

FSC Logo here

June 17–October 14, 2007

5. brisé fan with a fortune teller and chinoiserie motifs probably dutch, c. 1700–1725 gouache on ivory blades, silk ribbon (later), tortoiseshell, paste gems (later), and brass loop (later) 1985.r.516

10. folding fan with a scene of a visit to the wetnurse french, c. 1780 goauche on double silk leaf, brass, metallic thread, tortoiseshell, gilding, mother-ofpearl, and paste gems (some missing) 1985.r.490

15. folding fan with jacob meeting rachel by the well dutch, c. 1760s–1770s gouache and watercolor on single parchment leaf, mother-of-pearl, gilding, and paste gems 1985.r.504

6. louis-jacques goussier (french, 1722–1799) and defehrt (french, active mid–late 18th century) “fan maker: the painting of fan leaves (eventailliste: peinture des feuilles)” engraving from “receuil de planches,” a supplement of denis diderot and jean le rond d’alembert’s “encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers” (paris, 1765) lent by special collections, dallas public library

1. folding fan with a courting scene and landscape vignettes probably dutch or english, c. 1770s gouache and watercolor on single parchment leaf, ivory, gilding, mother-of-pearl, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.518

11. folding fan with a scene of card players in a fashionable interior french, c. 1740s–1750s gouche and watercolor on single vellum leaf, ivory or bone, gilding, gouache, silk, and brass 1985.r.494

7. folding fan with “adonis led by cupids to venus,” after francesco albani mount, italian, c. 1720s–1730s; guards and sticks, possibly french, c. 1740s–1750s gouache and watercolor on double vellum leaf, mother-of-pearl, gilding, and paste gem (later) 1985.r.496

12. folding fan with “the setting of the sun,” after françois boucher french, after 1753 gouache and watercolor on single vellum leaf, ivory, gilding, gouache, mother-of-pearl, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.495

3. folding fan with a courting scene and musical trophies french or german, c. 1770s–1780s gouache on double silk leaf, brass, metallic thread, mother-of-pearl, gilding, and paste gems 1985.r.509

8. brisé fan with a scene of the “comédie italienne” (italian comedians) french, c. 1700–1725 gouache on ivory or bone blades, silk ribbon (later), gilding, motherof-pearl, and brass 1985.r. 491

13. folding fan with “rinaldo and armida,” after françois boucher french, c. 1734–1750 gouache and watercolor on double vellum and paper leaf, mother-ofpearl, gilding, and paste gems 1985.r.517

21. folding fan with jephthah meeting his daughter probably english, c. 1740s–1750s gouache and watercolor on single vellum leaf, ivory, gilding, gouache, paper foil, and paste gems 1985.r.498

26. folding fan with views of the monuments of rome italian, c. 1780s–1790s gouache and watercolor on double vellum leaf, bone, gilding, and paste gems 1985.r.519

9. folding fan with a view of the pont neuf french, c. 1755–1760 gouache and watercolor on double vellum leaf, ivory, gilding, gouache, mother-of-pearl, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.508

17. folding fan with a classical subject, possibly an allegory of marriage possibly french or dutch, c. 1750s–1760s gouache on single vellum leaf, ivory, gilding, goauche, and brass 1985.r.503

22. folding fan with rebecca and eliezer at the well probably dutch, c. 1740s gouache and watercolor on single vellum leaf, mother-of-pearl, gilding, gouache, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.501

23. folding fan with grisaille scenes probably french or spanish, c. 1780s gouache on double silk leaf, brass, metallic thread, bone or ivory (stained), gilding, mother-of-pearl, and paste gems 1985.r.502 24. folding fan with a pastoral scene probably french, 1750–1760s gouache and watercolor on double vellum and paper leaf, motherof-pearl, gilding, brass, and paste gems (one missing) 1985.r.514

19. folding fan with a pastoral scene possibly french or german, c. 1740s–1750s gouache on double vellum and paper leaf, mother-of-pearl, gilding, goauche, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.507

27. folding fan with portrait medallions of marie antoinette and louis xvi french, after 1786 gouache and watercolor on double silk leaf, brass, silver, metallic thread, ivory, gilding, silver foil, and paste gems 1985.r.513

18. folding fan with a pastoral scene probably french, c. 1740s–1750s gouache and watercolor on double vellum and paper leaf, ivory, gilding, gouache, mother-ofpearl, and brass 1985.r.505

14. folding fan with an old testament subject, possibly adonijah before solomon probably dutch or english, c. 1770s gouache on double silk leaf, brass, metallic thread, vellum, motherof-pearl, gilding, ivory, glass or rock crystal, paste gems (later), and brass loop (later) 1985.r.500

18th-Century Painted Fans from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection

16. folding fan with the birth of venus probably french, c. 1770s–1780s gouache on single silk leaf, straw, brass, metallic thread, bone, gilding, mother-ofpearl, and paste gems 1985.r.492

4. folding fan with a chinoiserie scene, portraits, pastoral f igures, and still lifes french, c. 1780s gouache on double silk leaf, brass, metallic thread and netting, ivory, gilding, motherof-pearl, glass or rock crystal, and paste gems (later) 1985.r.521

25. brisé fan with a scene of an outdoor party (detail) french or dutch, c. 1700–1725 gouache on ivory blades, silk ribbon (later), gilding, tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl, and brass 1985.r.493

2. folding fan with a pastoral scene on a “domino” ground french, c. 1770s–1780s gouache and watercolor on double paper leaf, ivory, gilding, motherof-pearl, and paste gems 1985.r.510

20. folding fan with a pastoral scene dutch, c. 1770s gouache and watercolor on single vellum leaf, brass, mother-of-pearl, gilding, and paste gem 1985.r.512

north harwood st dallas tx 75 2 0 1 1 71 7

DallasMuseumofArt.org

A Painting in the Palm of Your Hand: 18th-Century Painted Fans from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art. Support provided, in part, by a grant from the Fan Association of North America. Air transportation provided by American Airlines.

The Dallas Museum of Art is supported in part by the generosity of Museum members and donors and by the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas/Office of Cultural Affairs and the Texas Commission on the Arts.

All fans: Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection Cover: Folding fan with views of the monuments of Rome, Italian, c. 1780s–1790s, gouache and watercolor on double vellum leaf, bone, gilding, and paste gems, Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.519

FSC Logo here

June 17–October 14, 2007