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.

Pastorelle, with two portrait medallions, mount paper, stick mother of pearl, finely carved with medallions &c. gilt. French. c. 1780.Wyatt Colln. V. & A. Museum.

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.’