AH ECHO OF OLD FRANCE

Evening Star, Issue 19614, 21 July 1927, Page 15

AH ECHO OF OLD FRANCE

“AND THIS WAS THE POMPADOUR’S FAN.” A recent addition to the art treasures of Melbourne National Gallery which is of special artistic and historic interest is the collection of seventeen French fans, shown in the VcrJou Gallery, and pre-icnlcU to the trustees hv Mr and Mrs E. T/ Mackowor. Tlio.se fans, which cover various kindred, interlinked periods, dating; from Louis XIV. to the first empire, convoy to the mind more intimately than could ho expressed by any printed chronicle the vision splendid of a phase of French national life in which the ruthless pursuit of pleasure was half-redeemed hy a culture which, despite i.ts artificiality, was never lacking in sympathy with the arts. Those were the times ol the Pompadour, Boucher, Madame I)u----harry, Watteau, and Fragonard, and the fan, a symbol of the elegance and frailty of the age, was the graceful tribute of art to vanity. To appreciate the beauty or a fan it is necessary to consider it not a mere object de luxe, hut as a decorative arrangement—the poetic conception of painter and artificer, working in harmony to produce within the limits of a convention something significant and vital in art Apart from the picture decorations of these fans, the delicate structures are full of artistry, wrought in gold, silver, ivory and mothor-01-pearl, and expressed with an artistic understanding ot the decorative unities. _ Artificiality is, under normal conditions, a term of reproach to the conscientious artist, but in the enchanted garden of the fan painter such cramping restrictions cease to trouble. Hefo wo have depicted Arcadian landscapes peopled by shepherds and shepherdesses such as never tended sheep of mundane breed — the dalliance of idyllic lovers far removed from any hint of the distractions and crosses common to mortals of the same genus—the reflection, m short, of a condition of society lulled by the pleasing of lutes to an illusive sense of security, but fast drifting towards the shock of a rude awakening. No individual record is given with any of these exhibits, but it would require no groat effort of vision to imagine that creation of the Louis XV. period; with its rich ornamentation and dainty pastorals, the possession of a reigning Court favorite and the work of one of the masters.