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So, I have 2 Chinese painted fans that I believe to be Shanghai school, maybe late 19th to early 20th c. However, each fans to have a large collaboration of artists, or at least has several artist signatures.
Can someone tell me why such collaborations were done? Who are these artists?
Thank you!
Tim

They were friends or acquaintances who sought to have some fun by coming up with a joint painting, maybe to memorialize a particular get-together. There's no particular weighty significance to this practice, which is pretty common. I'm not going to track down all of your artists, but one is Huang Zhongxiang
黄仲祥, active in the last years of the Qing dynasty . A landscape by him is pictured here: http://www.yangbaozhai.com/Display.asp?id=38

Another uses a pen name, 雪城居士 "the master of Xuecheng". Here's a website discussing the use of this name, which may be a place name rather than its literal meaning of "snowy town". The author is speculating that this person may have been someone Japanese named 雪城泽俊卿. Your artist appears to be the artist of the paintings pasted below point 5 on the webpage: https://bbs.artron.net/thread-3283036-1-1.html

Thanks, Rat!
This is a good starting point...I might be able to track down the other artists if they were associates.
Best,
TimG

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