Stormy Landscape with Fishermen at Sea

Many leading artists, both calligraphers and painters produced fan paintings. Literati were often at their best in small format paintings where the subtleties of brushwork could be readily appreciated and discerned.

Folding fans were often produced as gift paintings; some were mounted directly as albums while others were removed from their bamboo stays, backed with paper and compiled into albums. These selections are from such an album produced by twelve different artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Credit: Gift of Ruth and Bruce Dayton