Fan

On the recto there are scenes in six fields of different sizes and shapes asymmetrically arranged on a brown ground with various grid and floral patterns in gold. In the largest field there is a Chinese man squatting beside a low table and drawing with a pair of compasses around the table are another four men. In the smaller ones can be seen various animals—a bird, a buffalo, a deer, a faun, horses, and rabbits—and a young woman playing a stringed instrument held in her lap. On the verso is a composition consisting of garden flowers: roses, lotuses, bluebells, and so on. In the middle of the stick, embellished with a row of finely worked opened roses, are four Rococo figures making music: two young men and two ladies. On the upper part of each guard- stick is a figure wearing a hat and carrying a spade behind him is a well. When the fan is fully closed, the bottommost parts of the sticks exhibit a flower surrounded by leaves. The models for chinoiserie fans exhibiting genre pictures of this kind are undoubtedly to be sought among the pictures featuring in the many illustrated accounts of travels in China. A piece of similar type in the collection is MAA inv. no. 59 893 (Cat. No. 13).