The painting on the fan leaf shows Barcelona from the north, closely besieged; the bastion of Santa Ciara on the left has been breached and the Bourbon forces are now entering it. The siege took place in the final stages of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14). On the death of the childless Charles II of Spain, the chief claimants to the Spanish throne were the Bourbon Philip, Duke of Anjou (grandson of Louis XIV), and the Habsburg Archduke Charles (younger son of the Emperor Leopold); the former succeeded as Philip V of Spain in 1700. In 1705 an Anglo-Catalan force secured Barcelona for the Archduke Charles. The city was returned to Bourbon rule in 1714 after it was besieged, stormed and looted on behalf of Philip V. That siege is the subject of the present fan leaf.

The depiction of the siege is ultimately based on the engraving by Jacques Rigaud (1684-1745) Attaque et logement du chemin couvert, issued in 1732. Rigaud's print, which was part of a series of six, was copied in London by a number of print-makers, including Remi Parr in the mid-eighteenth century. Entitled The Attack on the Bastion, it was again produced as part of a series of six, and remained popular throughout the rest of the century. It is possible that one of these English copies rather than Rigaud's original was the model for this fan leaf.

The red-coated soldier on the verso of this fan, marching with his musket at the slope, was possibly copied from a design by Bernard Lens II (1682-1740), a drawing master who provided exemplars of military subjects. The European wars of the period c. 1670-1740 inspired a large number of fans, both painted and printed. In 1745 the painter Joseph Goupy submitted an invoice to Frederick, Prince of Wales (the elder son of George II), for materials and work related to fans, including 10 guineas 'For Painting the leather of the passage of the Rhine'. Printed depictions of military operations mounted on a rigid fan or handscreen were also produced in the mid-seventeenth century.

The fan is associated with a leather fan box (possibly the original one), with a note indicating that it had belonged to Queen Alexandra's mother, Queen Louise of Denmark. The leaf may have been cropped on the left-hand side; the sticks on the left side have a different width and seem to be in the wrong order.

Text adapted from Unfolding Pictures: Fans in the Royal Collection, 2005