Admiring a Collection of Decorated Fans
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The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, By Sheng Maoye, China, Ming dynasty, 1612 (Gift of Dr. Hayashi Munetake)
Asian Gallery (Toyokan) Room 8
July 11, 2023 (Tue) - August 20, 2023 (Sun)The wenren, or literati, were a social group in China who devoted themselves to writing, painting, and scholarly studies. One essential item in literati culture was the fan, which could be decorated with a painting or calligraphy. Fans were presented as gifts and carried as fashion accessories, subtly expressing their owners’ aesthetic tastes.
Decorated fans were also relatively inexpensive, which led to many people in China and Japan accumulating collections of these miniature artworks. This exhibition presents fans that Lian Quan (1868–1931), a collector of the late Qing dynasty, catalogued in The Xiaowanliutang Catalogue of Inscribed Fans and Painted Fans from the Ming and Qing Dynasties, which was published 1911.
| Designation | Name | Creation/ Excavation/ Provenance |
Period | Acquisition/ Ownership/ Accession Number |
CMT | ||
| Highlight | Landscape | By Wu Bin (dates unknown), China | Ming dynasty, 1604 | Private collection | |||
| Highlight | The Wind in the Pines in Myriad Valleys | By Yun Shouping (1633–1690), China | Qing dynasty, 1673 | Private collection |