1750-1760

Fan

Fans were frequently given as tokens of romantic affection in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This eighteenth-century example was a wedding present from Henry Pratt McKean (1810–1894) to his bride, Phebe E. Warren (1819–1894) in 1841. In the fan’s delicate painting, Mars, the Roman god of war, has abandoned his weapons to present a crown, a symbol of love, to Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. On the mother-of-pearl sticks, the Greek hero Heracles spins wool for his master and future wife, Queen Omphale of Lydia.