
Baroque · 1700s · French
Production
artisan-craft
Material
silk with ivory
Culture
French
Movement
Rococo decorative arts
Influences
Chinese fan construction · European landscape painting
This folding fan features delicate silk leaves painted with a pastoral landscape scene in soft watercolor tones. The fan displays a romantic countryside vista with trees and rolling hills rendered in muted blues, creams, and earth tones. The ivory or bone ribs are intricately carved with decorative openwork patterns and gilded details. The fan's pleated construction creates elegant radiating folds when opened, typical of 18th-century French craftsmanship. Metallic accents highlight the carved guard sticks, which frame the painted silk leaves. The landscape motif reflects the Rococo period's fascination with idealized nature scenes and pastoral themes.
Both fans deploy the same theatrical vocabulary of pastoral fantasy, but where the earlier Rococo example stages its mythological drama across the full sweep of painted paper, the later silk fan compresses its bucolic scene into a more intimate landscape vignette.


Both fans deploy the same theatrical vocabulary of pastoral fantasy, but where the earlier Rococo example stages its mythological drama across the full sweep of painted paper, the later silk fan compresses its bucolic scene into a more intimate landscape vignette.

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