On this occasion no less a sum than £275 was placed at the disposal of the Company, to be distributed as prizes for fans and fan designs, the exclusive work of British subjects, the number of exhibits reaching the very respectable total of six hundred.
In 1891 an important exhibition of ancient and modern fans was held at Karlsruhe, under the patronage of the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Baden, a sumptuous illustrated record of the exhibition being issued, the text written by Professor Marc Rosenberg. Sixteen prizes and forty-three diplomas of honour were offered for competition, in which some of the foremost continental artists took part. Of these the distinguished Austrian painter Hans Makart claims a leading place, and may be included in the already long list of artists of the foremost rank who have given their attention to fan painting. A design in crayons and water-colour by him appeared at this exhibition, and is now in the Royal Gallery at Berlin; a charming vision of a procession of children crowding the whole field of the fan, suggesting the impossibility of having too many. Professor Eugen
Klimsch of Frankfurt, the winner of one of the prizes, was represented by ‘The Dance,’ a composition of figures in the style of Watteau, a number of Cupids occupying the centre of the fan, which was priced at the high figure of £500. Professor Hermann Götz, director of the School of Arts and Crafts at Karlsruhe, showed an excellent classical composition on paper, of the chariot of an orb or planet. Professor Ferdinand Keller, of Karlsruhe, exhibited an apotheosis of the Emperor William I., an excellent fan mount of a pretty Cupid on a cloud, with a medallion portrait of the Empress and a large eagle. This in the possession of Mr. J. G. Rosenberg, who also owns an extremely able composition of a dance of bacchantes by Georg Papperitz.
There was also a powerful painting of the plein air school, of a pier with fishing-boats, ‘Bewegte See, Schwanenhaut,’ by Professor Gustav Schönleber; and an excellent naturalistic painting on silk of parrots, paroquets, etc., by Max Seliger of Berlin.
The above by no means exhausts the good things of this important exhibition, in which was represented practically every phase of modern art, and amply demonstrated the fact that the Germans, artists and public alike, are much more alive to the importance of the fan, both as affording an opportunity for artistic expression, and as an accessory of costume, than we are in this country.
Upon occasion, the fan has led to unforeseen and undesired consequences; a story is told of the eccentric King Ludwig of Bavaria, the gallant and prodigal admirer of the dancer Lola Montés. At one of the balls of his Court, a fair princess having inadvertently let her fan fall to the ground, the monarch hastened to pick it up and to restore it to the hands of the giddy beauty, when his forehead came in sharp contact with that of another gentleman, no less desirous than the king of paying homage to the fair. The shock was so great and so violent that King Ludwig, stunned for the moment, soon afterwards discovered growing on his forehead that enormous wen, so well known, and as celebrated as it was unlucky.[171]
| Autograph Fan. | Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. O.M., R.A. |
