r - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

mages of women pervade Art
Nouveau, but the modish young lady
on de Feure's fan is far from the typical
siren. Her reverie transforms a city park
into a hallucinatory vision in which everything,
as in a distorting mirror, seems to
turn in on itself: the city buildings
reflected upside-down in a pond, an
impossibly poised tree, and the twisting
lilies that loom almost ominously in the
foreground are all locked into a sinuous
linear pattern. The theme is chosen with
piquant symbolism for the decoration of
a fan destined to relieve the atmosphere
oppressing a lady of aesthetic bent.
About 1900. Printed silk, celluloid sticks
witli ivory I. 8 in. Purchase, Edward C.
Moore, Jr Gift. 26.228.19