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| Image | Sale date | Auction house | Location | Sale name | Lot No. | Estimate | Price Sold | Condition | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dec 11, 2020 | Est-Ouest Auctions | Tokyo | 2020 HONG KONG - TOKYO JOINT AUCTION | 240 | $****** - ****** | L'INSPIRATION, OU DEUX FILLETTES / INSPIRATION, OR TWO GIRLS |
paintings
31 x 43 cm (12.2 x 16.93 in)
ink and gouache on silk
signed, dated and stamped on the upper right ”Mai Thu 78年”
private collection, France
This work is a precious silk painting by Mai Thu in 1978, who is the artist who representing the Ecole Franco-Vietnamese. Mai Thu focused on daily life in Vietnam in his original style that combines traditional Vietnamese painting techniques with the sensibilities cultivated in Paris. Among his works, children and women with Áo dài are the most important motifs. Mai Thu illustrates an alluring image of two Vietnamese girls with gentle brush stroke. The girls in the painting have dignified and innocent posture, they glance at each other, seems to have endless secrets and thoughts in their eyes. The contrast of yellow and blue blouses, black and white trousers also highlights the image of characters. Distinguished for his precise brushwork, Mai Thu often employs fine outlines to delineate the soft curves of his stylized figures, which, akin to French post-Impressionists such as Matisse, allow the faces of the female subjects to take on a seemingly volumetric appearance. To paint on silk, some artists choose to dilute their pigments with tea to produce a translucent quality to the ink. The muted color palette coupled with monochromatic tones presents a dream-like quality to the painting, enunciating a calm atmosphere that allows the audiences to further admire the children in their delicate moment. Born in 1906 in Vietnam, Mai Trung Thu, known as Mai-Thu, studied at the French Lycée in Hanoi before joining the School of Fine Arts' first year. He was a professor of drawing from 1931 to 1937 in Hue, and participated in the 1937 International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris. This trip was decisive for him and he decided to settle in France. Although he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants in Paris as well as in various galleries, it was meeting Jean-François Apesteguy in the late 1950s that marked a turning point in his career as a painter and led him to fame. Mai Thu found delight in incorporating Vietnamese subject matter and symbolism into his art. The folk-like themes of his dainty images of women, children and idealized landscapes were often a celebration of rural Vietnam that captured a sense of innocence and nostalgia for the past. By stylistically blending aesthetic traditions from Vietnamese paintings and the ‘French Salon' style, Mai Thu remains one of the major paragons of the ‘Ecole Franco-Vietnamese' today and is known particularly for capturing the tender moments of everyday life with his oeuvre of classic and graceful Vietnamese figures.
