It has been shown, beyond any possibility of doubt, that during the seventeenth century French exportation of this dainty article to Spain was considerable, French fans enjoying the best reputation in that country, as well as in Italy, and that this pre-eminence was maintained during the succeeding century, the period of the highest development of the fan industry in France; but while it is difficult to associate the native Spanish workmanship with fans of the highest calibre, a preference for the richer French fans having always prevailed, it is certain that the production of the cheaper fans was, and is, considerable, Valencia being the chief centre of the industry. It is equally certain that in no country in Europe is the employment of the fan so general, or the toy so gracefully wielded, as in this land of light, colour, and romance.

Théophile Gautier (Tra los montes) thus refers to the importance of the fan in Spain: ‘The Fan corrects in some measure the pretension of the Spaniards to Parisianism. A woman without a fan is a thing I have never yet seen in that favoured land; I have seen women wearing satin shoes without any stockings, but they had, nevertheless, their fans, which follow them everywhere, even to church, where you meet groups of all ages, kneeling or sitting, praying and fanning themselves with equal fervour.’

‘We should remember,’ says Disraeli (Contarini Fleming), ‘that here [Cadiz], as in the north, the fan is not confined to the delightful sex. The cavalier also has his fan; and, that the habit may not be considered an indication of effeminacy, learn that in this scorching clime the soldier will not mount guard without this solace.’

In Spain, as in China and Japan, there is a fan for every occasion—for the street, where paper ones are used, these affording more breeze on a sultry day than do lace or silk; for feast days, bull-fights,95 and the theatre, silk or lace fans, mounted on sandalwood, bone, ivory, or mother-of-pearl. A favourite material is silk, mounted on a carved wooden frame which opens and shuts easily, a most essential thing in a Spanish fan, which is perpetually in motion, portraying the feelings and thoughts that are passing through the mind of its owner.

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. Before the play begins, or during the intervals, every one talks in the midst of a confused noise resembling the buzzing of an immense swarm of flies. The curtain rises—all resume their places; the conversation ceases; the fans, everywhere waving in varied movement, gradually, one by one, tone down into regularity of time; they flutter in captivating cadence, suggesting in appearance a crowd of variegated butterflies, and charming the ear with their delightful ‘frou-frou.’

It is this play of the fan (manejo del abanico) in which fair dames and demoiselles have become such adepts, that it has been necessary to coin a word to express this charming art. Thus, ‘abanicar’ means the play of the fan, while ‘ojear’ signifies the language of the eyes. These two manœuvres, remarks M. Louis Énault shrewdly, are closely allied, and one alone suffices for a man’s destruction.

The fan, indeed, has its own particular language, more eloquent than that of flowers—the Spanish novia (lady-love) communicates her thoughts by code to her novio (sweetheart), as—engaged couples in Spain being never allowed alone—woman’s ready wit has devised this means of private conversation.

The instructions are set forth in fifty different directions in a little booklet published in German by Frau Bartholomäus, from the original Spanish of Fenella. A few examples will probably suffice as an indication of the method:—

And so on, through the whole gamut of the language of love.

A shorter code has been published in English (duly copyrighted) by M. J. Duvelleroy. This, although the principle is the same, differs materially in the details; thus, ‘I love you’ in Spanish is to hide the eyes behind the opened fan; in English, to draw the fan across the cheek. ‘I hate you,’ in the former instance, is to raise the shut fan to the shoulder in the right hand; in the latter, to draw the fan through the hand: either code being sufficiently expressive and acquired with tolerable ease.

CHAPTER VII

PAINTED FANS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES (FRENCH)

FAN OF RICE STRAW
(From a Fifteenth-Century MS. in the National Library, Paris.)The so-called Renaissance of the arts of France in the sixteenth century was the outcome of an increased knowledge of, and familiarity with, Italian ideals of life, and the splendours of a more refined civilisation; it represented the assimilation of the national spirit, the union of French ‘netteté d’exécution’ with the more sober learning of Italian tradition. The beginnings of this Italian influence are to be discovered earlier, in the visit of Jean Foucquet to Italy in 1440-1445; this event being the signal for a general migration of Italian artists northward.

For the purposes of the fan, however, we are concerned only with the history of French art from the period when, in 1530, at the invitation of François I., Le Rosso and Primaticcio repaired to Paris for the purpose of decorating the palace at Fontainebleau.

At this period architecture was creating Chenonceau and Chambord. Sculpture, in the hands of Cellini and Jean Goujon, was providing the decorative details for the château then being built by Philibert de l’Orme for Diana de Poitiers.

In the sister art of Painting, Jean Cousin and François Clouet, together with Primaticcio, who continued working until 1570, were the dominant influences.

Simon Vouet, recalled to Paris after a lengthy sojourn in Rome, was painting the nobles of the French court, and decorating for Richelieu the Palais Royal and the Château de Rueil. Poussin, French by birth, Italian and classic in sympathy, found the artistic atmosphere of Rome more congenial to him. In 1640, upon a pressing invitation from Louis XIII., he migrated to Paris, but, on account of court intrigues, the jealousies of his brother artists, and the malignity of Vouet, under pretence of bringing his wife from Rome, he left Paris in 1642, never to return.

The pupils of Vouet were Le Sueur and Charles le Brun. With this latter artist French painting enters upon a new phase, and it is impossible to overestimate the influence for good or for evil exercised by him during the latter half of the seventeenth century; nay, it extended practically over the whole of the century, since he began painting almost from his infancy.

The work of Le Brun, in spite of its many affectations, possesses many admirable qualities: such a composition, for example, as ‘The Entry of Alexander into Babylon,’ now in the Louvre, which, by the way, appears on an Italian fan in the Wyatt collection, at once stamps him as a master of decorative arrangement, and is typical both of his qualities and his limitations.

One of the most significant events in the history of French art was the founding of the Academy in 1648: in this Le Brun naturally took a leading part, as also in the foundation of the French School in Rome, of which he was the first director. The establishment of the Academy had a direct as well as an indirect bearing upon the fan, since on more than one occasion it ‘used the power of its prestige in defence of the just liberties of the éventaillistes.’96

Pierre Mignard (Le Romain), the lifelong rival of Le Brun, possessed something of the grand manner, derived from his study of the Carracci and Domenichino. In 1664 he was the head of the Academy of St. Luke, and in 1690, upon the death of Le Brun, he was appointed Director of the Academy of Painting, a post which he filled until his death in 1695.

We have said that during the sixteenth century, Italian influences on French art were paramount—these influences being entirely healthy and regenerative. Throughout the succeeding century the dominant influence was still Italian, but its effect was as deleterious as it had been formerly beneficent.

By 1700 the decorative arts were well on the downward path. Bernini had been dead twenty years, but his influence, together with that of Borromini, was still a living thing, and was still working irreparable mischief. Sir M. Digby Wyatt, in a powerful article written for Owen Jones’s Grammar of Ornament, referring to Borromini, says: ‘From his fervid imagination and rare facility as a draughtsman and designer, he soon obtained ample employment; and in his capricious vagaries, every tendency to extravagance that Bernini’s style possessed Borromini contrived to caricature. Until his death, in 1667, he continued sedulously occupied in subverting all known principles of order and symmetry, not only to his own enrichment, but to the admiration of the leaders of the fashion of the day. The anomalies he introduced into design, the disproportionate mouldings, broken, contrasted, and re-entering curves, ... became the mode of the day, and all Europe was speedily busy in devising similar enormities. In France the fever raged speedily, and the popular style, in place of the quaint but picturesque forms to be seen in the engravings of Du Cerceau, 1576, substituted the more elaborate but less agreeable ones to be found in Marot, 1727, and Mariette, 1726-7.... Despite this debasing influence,’ continues our author, ‘many of the French artists of the time, both of Louis XIV. and XV., in the midst of their extravagances, made many beautiful ornamental designs, showing in them a sense of capricious beauty of line rarely surpassed.’

This, although written at the period of perhaps the very lowest ebb of the decorative arts, the mid-Victorian era, pretty well sums up the matter, and is a fair estimate of the decorative tendencies that obtained at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The general character of the fan, therefore, necessarily partook of this debasing influence, and reflected the ornamental vulgarities and fashionable inanities of the time. Thus we have, in moulded ornament, a profusion of those extravagant shell-like cartouches which have become identified with the periods of Louis XV. and XVI.; curly structures elaborately perforated, beginning and ending at will, observing no reasonable or well-defined law, but expressing only the caprice of the artist. These either formed the starting-point for the lighter ornaments, or were associated with naturalistic swags and festoons of fruit and flowers, masks, ribbons, etc.

With the dawn of the eighteenth century, French pictorial art enters upon that era of fêtes galantes, conversations galantes, and amusements champêtres, which, whatever its shortcomings, was purely French and native to the soil. The pernicious influence of the Italian decadence is about to be shaken off. Watteau was sixteen years old, and just commencing those labours which resulted in the practical regeneration of French painting. He may be said to dominate the art of the eighteenth century as completely as Le Brun had overshadowed the century which preceded. He sums up in himself that spirit of the joyousness of life, that careless, impulsive frivolity which is the note of the age.

His immediate followers, Lancret, Pater, and in some sense De Troy, carried on the tradition, but with a more pronounced convention: the shimmer and sheen of silk and satin draperies are painted according to a recipe, the general treatment of the subjects reveals a less delicate fancy, and a less tender sympathy.

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. In his pupil Fragonard, we have in reality the true heir and successor of Watteau—the same supple touch, the same alluring grace, the same captivating invention and suggestiveness which always summons us to an enchanted land of love, and music, and dalliance.

It was an exceedingly gay, light-hearted, and pleasant time—in painting at any rate. Strephon sat at the feet of Phyllis, warbling soft nothings to the accompaniment of the lute. Dan Cupid, who was everywhere in evidence, took it for granted that his presence was always à propos, and never troubled his curly head as to whether his decorative surroundings were in the nicest possible taste. The fan necessarily reflected this eccentricity and extravagance—indeed it took its natural place in the general decorative scheme; the ‘dainty rogues’ of the sideboard and mantel-shelf were in complete harmony with the still more dainty rogues of the fan; the shepherdess in her flowered skirt rubbed shoulders, or attempted to do so, with the fine lady in crinoline.

The fun waxed faster and more furious; the times grew madder and still more mad; the exuberance of the rococo became more and more pronounced, until no inanity remained untried, no extravagant banality overlooked. Then came the inevitable reaction. The latter half of the century witnessed the sowing of the seed, and, indeed, the full fruition, of that neo-classicism, which, although a relief from the barocco of the preceding period, was the outcome of no settled conviction except the desirability of entering any port in a storm; it had its origin in the interest which was then being taken in archæology and classical research.

With the Revolution came artistic chaos, and—the nineteenth century. The cold, correct classicalities of the ‘style de l’Empire’ were due, in great part, to the influence of the painter David, although the inauguration of this new epoch was claimed by Vien. The work of David and that of his immediate followers, Girodet, Gros, Gérard, and Ingres, represented perhaps the natural antidote to the decorative debauch which is here passed rapidly in review; its final overthrow was brought about by that riot of academic tradition in which it subsequently indulged, rather than by the labours of Delacroix and the school of Romanticists which followed.

This, in the briefest possible terms, is an account of the general and more obvious tendencies of French art during the two centuries we have under consideration. How far, then, and to what extent may we trace the direct handiwork of these artists upon the fan? What of the authors of these dainty creations, that fluttered and shimmered like so many butterflies through the summer sunshine—what do we know of their personality?

Several references are made in this work to the similarity which exists between the éventaillistes and the ceramists. The conditions of production were precisely the same, the workers in the two arts were, broadly speaking, of the same artistic calibre; indeed, it is on record that, upon a shortage of painters at the royal factory of Sèvres, the éventaillistes were called in to fill the breach. At the close of the reign of Louis XV., says Paul Mantz, the most prominent éventaillistes were Chevalier, Josse, Boguet, Hébert, Race, and Mme. Vérité. Amongst the painters, almost in every instance obscure, were doubtless some young artists who had still their position to make, and the signature of Cahaigue is recorded with the date 1766. In the Louvre are two fan leaves signed by Raymond La Farge, c. 1680. An ivory brisé fan, with the subject of Blindman’s Buff, signed ‘Tiquet Fecit, 1720,’ appeared in the Walker sale in 1882. Le Sieur Pichard, also, is mentioned in an almanac of 1773, as being very well known as a fan painter; Mme. Doré, at the same date, painted on silk and gauze: both the last-named worked for the éventaillistes.—But the greater names, which have become illustrious in the annals of French art, Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard; is it possible to claim these also for the fan?—A fan bearing the ineffably gracious touch of a Fragonard, what a possession! Lancret painted a picture in the form of a fan, representing two figures in a wooded landscape. M. Paul Mantz, referring to the fan in the collection of Dr. Poigey of Paris, decorated with light simple ornament and medallion heads of a youth and two young girls, says: ‘The delicacy of refined rose tint, the sureness of touch, the free manipulation of the gouache, show a master-hand; of a certainty, if Boucher ever painted a fan, it is this one.’

Balzac (Cousin Pons) refers to a ‘gem of a fan’ found at a secondhand dealer’s, enclosed in a little box of West India wood, signed by Watteau(?), and formerly the property of La Pompadour. The old musician turns towards his cousin with a courtly bow, offers her the fan of the favourite, saying: ‘It is time for that which has served Vice to be in the hands of Virtue; a hundred years will be required to work such a miracle. Be sure that no princess can have anything comparable with this chef d’œuvre, for it is unhappily in human nature to do more for a Pompadour than for a virtuous Queen.’

We learn from Brantôme that Catherine de’ Medicis, who made her first public entry into Paris as queen in 1549, introduced into the French court the Italian feather-fans, in general use in Italy at that period; these being made and sold by the perfumers who came in the queen’s retinue. In a half-length engraved portrait in the British Museum, the queen bears a plumed fan with an elaborately ornamented handle garnished with pearls; in another portrait, a plumed fan with a mirror in the centre. Brantôme records that, upon the untimely death of the king, her husband, Catherine caused to be put round her device98 broken fans, with the feathers falling to pieces and the mirror cracked;99 this in token of having abandoned worldly frivolities. In a small oval engraved portrait in the British Museum collection, this broken fan motif is introduced as forming a diapered border; the fans alternated with twisted cords and scythes.

It is not until the reign of Henry III., that we find the first authentic evidence of the use of l’éventail plissé; fans were then much in fashion, and, says Henri Estienne, ‘were held so much in esteem, that, now the winter is come, the ladies cannot give them up, but having used them in summer to cool themselves against the heat of the sun, they make them serve in winter against the heat of the fire.’100

Pierre de l’Estoile, in his Isle des Hermaphrodites, 1588, gives us a detailed account of the fan used by this effeminate monarch, evidently some form of cockade, ‘expanding and folding merely by a turn of the fingers.’ It was sufficiently large to be used also as a parasol, and served therefore the double purpose of cooling the air, and preserving the delicate complexion of the king.

The material was vellum, cut as delicately as possible, with lace around of similar stuff.101 ‘I could see in the other chambers,’ continues this author, ‘fans of the same material, or of taffetas, with borders of gold and silver lace.’

This art of elaborate cutting, in vellum, paper, and other material, was, as a matter of fact, a favourite pastime of the period; it is said to have been indulged in by the king himself, and it may be taken that this method of découpé, or découpé in association with other forms of ornamentation, was employed in a large number of the fans of this epoch, both of the cockade and semicircular form.

Of this latter type, now beginning to be the vogue, the Actæon fan in the Musée de Cluny is one of the earliest known examples. The leaf is of parchment, cut in a series of slits through which the ten sticks, shaped to an ornamental profile, are inserted. The vellum around the sticks is painted to the shape of arrows; the spaces between are cut away, to allow of the insertion of strips of mica, upon which are painted devices representing Actæon, his hounds, a stag, a swan, etc. The general character of the ornamentation is that of the earlier French Renaissance; the date, c. 1580.

The fan industry in France had become of such importance under Henry IV., that it was necessary to regulate it by statute; certain concessions were therefore granted in December 1594 to the several bodies of craftsmen engaged in the art of fan-making. These were confirmed, and fresh regulations added, towards 1664.

On a petition presented to Louis XIV. in 1673 by the master fan-makers to the number of sixty, they were constituted a corporate body by the edict of March 23rd of that year, and their privileges further strengthened by edicts of December 1676 and January and February 1678. These ordained that the company should be ruled by four jurors, two of whom were re-nominated every year in September in an assembly at which every master could assist irrespectively. No one could be a master without having served four years’ apprenticeship and having produced a chef-d’œuvre. Nevertheless, the sons of a master were exempt from the chef-d’œuvre as well as the members who married the widows or daughters of masters. The widows enjoyed the privileges of their departed husbands so long as they remained single. They could not, however, engage new apprentices. The entrance fee was fixed at four hundred livres.

In 1753, the period of the highest development of the industry, there were no less than one hundred and fifty master fan-makers in Paris, and from a rare book (Journal du Citoyen), published at the Hague in 1754, we learn the prices usually obtained: Wooden fans (les éventails de bois de palissandre), 6 to 18 livres a dozen; fans in gilt wood (bois d’or), 9 to 36 livres a dozen; those partly of wood and partly of ivory (les maistres brins en yvoire et la gorge en os), 24 to 72 livres a dozen. Ivory fans, 48 to 60 livres a dozen; others more elaborate sold for 30 or 40 pistoles apiece.

The fan-makers were united with the wood-polishers and lute-makers by the edict of August 11th, 1776, as was also the painting, carving, and varnishing relative to these crafts.

The proportions of the folded fan have varied considerably at different periods, in obedience to the caprices of fashion, and this, together with other features, is a general indication as to date. An attempt is here made, by means of a series of diagrams, to formulate, from well-authenticated examples, a system of development; but this can only be accepted in a general way, since during most periods, and especially during the eighteenth century, many exceptions to this rule might be cited.

During the last half of the sixteenth century, doubtless, the general proportion of the fan was that of a fourth of a circle. Alex. Fabri, 1593, gives the costume of the French ladies of his time and of older date, and observes that these ladies held fans of a quarter circle plissés. Vecellio, 1600, gives fans of a similar proportion. These were both brisé and leaf; the fans of Ferrara, decorated with mica insertion, were also of this shape. At this same period, fans were also made of a slightly extended width, the Actæon fan of Cluny being an example.

The width was gradually extended during the first half of the seventeenth century, until, at the close of the reign of Louis XIII., it had attained almost a full semicircle, the engraved fans of Abraham Bosse being authentic instances.

During the reign of the Grand Monarque the mount is deep, the shoulder, as a consequence, low; the fan, after a slight reduction, again opening out to a full semicircle. The blades, which in the first half of the seventeenth century varied in France from four to eighteen, had increased by the end of the century to twenty-four or twenty-six, the number again falling to between eighteen to twenty-one by the middle of the succeeding century. During the reign of Louis XV. the width of the fan was lessened, being reduced to one-third of a circle, the shoulder being raised about 1720, thus leaving less space for the mount, the blades numbering eighteen to twenty-two.

In the succeeding reign (Louis XVI.) the fan once again unfolded itself to a full semicircle; the blades were either straight and narrow, the incrustations of a correspondingly reticent character, or very broad, showing no space between, the decorations extremely ornate; their number in either instance varying from twelve to sixteen or eighteen.

The above scale of proportion is, however, by no means absolute; we have fans with high shoulders, and correspondingly shallow mounts during the period of Louis XIV.; we also have, during the same period, fans which open out only to the third of a circle.

The size of the folding-fan has also been subject to many variations. From the period of its introduction it increased under Louis XIV., fluctuated to the middle of the eighteenth century, and gradually lessened its proportions to the period of the Revolution and First Empire.

In 1729 the Duc de Richelieu writes: ‘Small fans have quite gone out, and the newest are bigger than ever. Ladies are now never without them, summer or winter.’ From the Mercure de France, October 1730, we learn that ‘Many fans are of a very considerable price and excessively large, so that some little folks are not quite twice the height of their own fans, a circumstance which ought to fill with a due sense of respect the light and playful cavaliers.’ This continued during the hoop period or second blossoming of the whalebone petticoat, when the fan, not to be outdone, assumed similar vast proportions, and again dwindled to such an extent that it acquired the name of ‘imperceptible.’

Another important consideration in determining the date of a fan is in the fact that the sticks, being of a more enduring substance than the mount, have often been remounted with paintings of a later date;102 the careful collector will, therefore, in selecting a specimen, consider the fan in all its various characteristics—the style of the painting, and the general character of its ornamentation.

Mr. S. Redgrave, in his catalogue of the fans exhibited at South Kensington in 1870, refers to the difficulty in assigning fans to the country to which their manufacture might be most correctly attributed: ‘Workmen of one country have been tempted to another; Chinese carvers brought to Europe; parts of fans in which a particular country has excelled have been imported to another, and used with its native manufacture. In all cases, novel taste, approved by fashion, has never failed to become the object of universal imitation.’

The art of painting during the reign of Louis XIII. began to play a more important part in the decoration of fans; the subject, in the few examples existing of this epoch, being usually enclosed in a florid cartouche with festoons of fruit, flowers, amorini, etc., as in the three engraved examples by Abraham Bosse, who was working in Paris at this period. Indeed it is extremely probable that the publication of these fans strongly influenced the character of the decoration of fan mounts; it is more than possible that Bosse himself painted fans, since he was painter as well as engraver, although his pictures are extremely rare. The label, ‘Éventails de Bosse,’ appearing on the box handed by the merchant to the lady in the engraving ‘La Galerie du Palais,’ may quite conceivably refer to painted as well as engraved fans.

La Galerie du Palais, besides forming the subject of Bosse’s engraving, supplied Corneille with the motif of one of his comedies produced in 1634. ‘La Galerie’ was situated in the midst of the city, beside the Palais de Justice, between the two branches of the Seine, and had become, at the close of the reign of Henry IV., a ‘lively and animated centre.’

In the latter years of the reign of Louis XIII. it was, as we learn from the explanatory verses at the foot of Bosse’s engraving, as also from Corneille’s comedy, a place of rendezvous for, and assignations with, the beau-monde.

It was furnished with wooden shops in which were arranged objets de luxe, new fashions, chefs-d’œuvres of industry, laces, and jewellery.

The engraving shows a mercer’s shop with a cavalier and lady examining fans, these objects being also exposed to view in the window. We have here a genuine bit of old Paris of the time of Louis XIII., and thus obtain a clear idea of what the Paris fan shops were like at this epoch.

Fans had, indeed, at this period obtained a firm hold upon the affections of the fair, though not so firm as to preclude the possibility of a powerful rival. The witty author of the lines appended to Bosse’s engraving of Summer, in the circular composition of the four seasons, a lady with a fan, accompanied by a Cupid bearing a parasol, suggests that the love-god himself would be a better substitute for the fan, not only for cooling the heated cheek, but also to assuage the fire that burns within.

Authenticated examples of Louis XIII. fans are exceedingly rare. In the Jubinal collection at Paris is a superb fan painted on skin, representing the king playing blind-man’s buff with the four quarters of the globe. This is designed upon the same principle as the three engraved fans of Bosse above referred to, i.e. the subject enclosed in a large and elaborate cartouche, filling the whole field of the fan, a system of decoration which lasted well into the reign of Louis XIV.

The Countess de Beaussier exhibited at South Kensington, in 1870, a mount of vellum painted with a large medallion or cartouche in the centre, of lords and ladies of the court of France joining in a dance in a park, the border enriched with coloured ornament in the style of the period.

During the earlier part of the reign of Louis XIII., Anne of Austria, his queen, introduced many Spanish fashions into France, amongst them being fans.

It is recorded of this princess that, during a conference with Richelieu, some kittens amused themselves with the ribbons of her fan which had been left on a table in the antechamber; from this circumstance the ribbons acquired the name of Badins (playful).103

It was from a similar light incident that, later, at the time of the unpopularity of Mazarin, the fan became a means of expressing political intrigue. Straw was adopted as the rallying sign of the Frondeurs, who, after the victory in Paris, wore it in their hats and button-holes.

A great crowd was applauding the king and princess in the great allée, and crying out against Mazarin. Mademoiselle had appeared holding a fan as she walked, to which was attached a bouquet of straw bound with blue ribbon.

Straw also formed part of the decoration of fans, both at this period and later. The pattern of leaves, flowers, fruits, or conventional ornament, was cut in various coloured straws and applied. The handsome fan in the possession of Lady Bristol, with the subject of Hector and Andromache, after Antoine Coypel, belonging, however, to a later period, is decorated at the sides with coloured straw-work. This material was even employed in the decoration of the stick in the form of inlay upon ivory and other substance; an example occurs in the collection of Mr. L. C. R. Messel. This also of a much later period.

D’Alembert, in his Réflexions et Anecdotes sur la Reine de Suède, recounts how the irascible, fierce, and railing daughter of Gustavus Adolphus found herself at the court of Louis XIV., when the fashion of fans was general (1656-1657). Consulted by a fair Frenchwoman as to whether she should ply her fan even during the winds of winter, Christina replied that the lady might fan herself or not, as she pleased; either way she would be a straw blown about by the wind. Upon this, the court dames, nettled at the rude reply of the haughty mistress of Monaldeschi, one and all armed themselves with fans, and waved them furiously whenever the queen was present, by way of exhibiting a wholesome French contempt for northern barbarism.104

This circumstance led to the adoption of fans of a richer and more ornate description. 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.

It was, doubtless, some such fan, some enchanting reminiscence of the dainty ‘putti’ of Poussin, that Madame de Sévigné sent to her daughter, Madame de Grignan.—‘The Chevalier de Buous brings you a fan, which I think very pretty: they are not little loves upon it, for without doubt they are little chimney-sweeps, the most charming little sweeps in the world.’105

Two fans are known of the beginning of the reign of the Grand Monarque. One, of which only the feuille is preserved, is in the possession of Mr. J. G. Rosenberg, of Karlsruhe, the other in the Schreiber collection, British Museum. The former is painted in gouache on swan skin, and represents the signing of the marriage contract between Louis XIV. and Maria Theresa, which event took place at St. Jean de Luz on the Spanish frontier in 1660. The king and queen are seated before a table in the centre, the courtiers standing in a semicircle, the men in their fur-trimmed robes, the ladies all bearing fans; an official in the foreground is reading aloud the marriage contract. The pattern of the carpet is seized upon as a decorative motif, and forms a diapered groundwork to the composition after the manner of the earlier miniaturists. This truly magnificent mount betrays no evidence of the Italian influence; no suggestion of ‘le premier peintre du Roi,’106 but entirely reminiscent of the great traditional French style. It is, moreover, an original production, rather than, as is the case of so many fan leaves, a mere transcription of the work of the greater artists.