| Ivory Empire Fan. | Lady Northcliffe. |
| Spangled Fan, with painted miniatures. English. | Mrs Frank W. Gibson. |
By the 6th Anne, cap. 19, silks wrought or mixed with gold, silver, or other materials, clandestinely imported, are forfeited, with £200 for every importer, and £100 by the receiver, seller, or concealer.
It therefore appears that either mounts, or fans that are painted, are seizable; and that all fans or mounts embellished with gold or silver are prohibited under very severe penalties, particularly under 4th Edward III., and 15th and 22nd George II. Further, paper fan-mounts could not be imported without paying a duty of 55 per cent.; the duty on plain fans being 27-1/2 per cent., or, if imported as toys, 37 per cent.
In a table of fees taken by packers and water-side porters for shipping and landing the goods or merchandise of strangers, second charter of Charles II., 1660, ‘For a load of fans, one shilling.’
The vogue of fans became general during the first half of the eighteenth century, when fan-painting was a most lucrative profession. The sculptor Nollekens tells us that when his wife was a girl, her father’s intimate friend Goupy (a well-known water-colour draughtsman who died in London in 1763) was considered the most eminent of the fan-painters, and that fan-painting was then so fashionable that the family of ‘Athenian Stuart’ (so called on account of his exquisite studies of Athens) placed him as a pupil to Goupy, conceiving that by so doing they had made his fortune; and we learn from other sources that Stuart originally gained his livelihood by painting fans.
A fan-mount in the Schreiber collection is painted with three medallions of Roman views, The Arch of Constantine, The Arch of Titus, and The Forum, the field of the fan decorated with delicate classical grotesques and border, signed ‘Jose Goupy, 1738, N.A.’ The views are skilfully drawn in pen line with wash, in the style of the water-colour draughtsmen of this period, i.e. a low-toned scheme of colour, a good deal of india ink being used. This signed example is of the greatest value in determining the character of Goupy’s work, and it is extremely probable that he was responsible for a good many mounts generally considered as Italian. It was from Goupy, too, that Stuart originally derived his interest in classic architectural remains, and, doubtless also, much of his skill in depicting them.
Fans had, indeed, at this period become an indispensable adjunct to a lady’s toilet, a temporary loss of this instrument, upon occasion, causing much perturbation of spirit. An amusing story of such a catastrophe is told in The Gentleman’s Magazine for April 1736:
‘What whims, what trifles, light as air,