Tableaux

1900 · 164294 — No date. circa1900. 11 original hand painted fan designs approximately 40 x 15cm laid down on archival sheets 51 x 38cm. Each design is unique some are brightly coloured whilst others are more sombre and some have a lacquer or metallic overprinting and silver flecking. Each of the designs has been backed with Japanese paper. Undated and in very good condition apart from some very minor spotting to the backing sheets not affecting the image they appear to be early 1900s. The collection is housed in a custom-made clamshell case. The earliest recorded sighting of the Japanese fan was in the 6th century CE where burial tombs were adorned with pictures of fans. Drawing on the fan began around the Heian period 794-4485 and became such a hit that laws were created to restrict their use to particular social classes. Historically Japanese hand fans were tools of aristocrats and the samurai class. They were a way to signify social standing and even communicate messages. Japanese fan designs enchanted westerners when they first became exposed to them. Those influenced include the Australian artist Charles Conder who in the 1890s inspired by Japanese fan designs made a speciality of painting them on silk. <br> <br>Various images painted on these fans have symbolic or seasonal meanings. One shows an array of golden origami cranes on a red background symbolizing long life. Another is decorated with peonies symbols of fertility and nobility whose flowering marks the end of spring and beginning of summer. A third is decorated with images of pine bamboo and plum blossom - a combination representing health and longevity because all three plants can withstand cold weather. Others have more abstract images based on the flow of rivers the sheen of silk and other themes. . unknown