Coastal Landscape with Figure

Historical documents state that the folding fan first spread to China via Korea from Japan around the tenth to eleventh century. The popularity of folding fans in Ming dynasty China (1368–1644) was due to the emergence of Chinese-made imitations, which competed with Japanese folding fans at an affordable price. Japanese folding fans commonly depicted plants, birds, and figures, but did not gain much social attention until fifteenth century. Different from small and delicate images on Japanese fans, Chinese folding fans featured landscape paintings. The slope of the coast depicted on this fan follows the fan’s arc. The ocean is emphasized by a poetry inscription, a boat, and a scholarly figure who contemplates the water. Such a composition can be seen as a variant of mainstream painting at that time, which enabled the highest artistic expression—landscape—to be portrayed on a portable and intimate canvas. - Chi-Lynn Lin, "Echoing Overseas" label text, Fall 2022