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| LA JEUNE FILLE DE HUÉ |
Mai Trung Thu, one of Vietnam’s
founding modern artists, was born in 1906, in
Do Nha village, An Duong District, Kien An Province (Tan
Tien commune, An Duong District, Hai Phong), (North)
Vietnam. He first studied traditional Vietnamese art and craft (such as cabinet
making, pottery, embroidery, inlay work etc.) at Hanoi’s ‘Professional School in Hanoi’ (founded
by the French in 1902) then, later, underwent the very first
entrance examination to study at the newly opened (1925) Indochina Art
School (Ecole des Beaux- Arts de l'Indochine). This school of art was one treasure
that colonial France gave to colonised Vietnam, with French artist teachers and
workshops organised by Vietnamese artisans. Nadine Andre-Pallois in her
excellent article ‘The Ecole des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine: A Striking Shift in
Vietnamese Art’, (when talking about the founding of art schools in Vietnam),
reminds us that…
“In the first
instance, there were schools for applied arts where the teachers were French
and Indochinese and where the teaching look into consideration regional
traditions Since 1902, the ‘Professional School in Hanoi’ has trained artisans
in skills such as cabinet making, pottery, embroidery and inlay work. Some of
the students like Le Pho and Mai Trung Thu who trained there later joined the Ecole
des Beaux- Arts de l'Indochine and became famous in their own right. Teachers
were French, but the workshops were organised by Vietnamese artisans. Gustave
Hierholtz, a French sculptor, was director from 1919 to 1930.”
While Gustave Hierholtz, a French sculptor, was director of
the ‘Professional School in Hanoi’,
Victor Tardieu was the founder and first director of the Indochina Art
School (Ecole des Beaux- Arts de l'Indochine), with assistance from local
painter, and former student at Paris’ Ecole des Beaux –Arts, Nam Son.
As Nora Taylor (Crossroads
11:2) has attested, it was in the French colonial time (late 1880s to 1954)
that Vietnam saw its “...modern art
tradition beginning.” The founding of the Indochina Art School (Ecole des
Beaux- Arts de l'Indochine, was a great leap forward for the arts in Vietnam,
away from the traditional and the Chinese styles arts (mostly calligraphy) and
the Vietnamese craft centered arts, and into a bright ‘modern’ future. The
gaining of knowledge concerning western ‘Modernism’ was not, as you might
suspect, a mere imposition of western values onto unwitting recipients
cloistered in what the French had name ‘Indochina’, but a truly revelatory
experience for young artists in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, enabling those
artists to grow into their own unique styles while remembering their homelands.
Nadine Andre-Pallois mentions that…
“The curriculum was
supposed to combine Western art with Far-Eastern traditions. The teaching was
close to that of the Ecole des Beaux- Arts in Paris. Topics taught there
included life drawing, linear perspective, open-air painting, and oil
painting……..In addition, there were classes on the history of art and
techniques specific to the Far East, such as silk painting and lacquer painting.”
Mai Trung Thu graduated from the Ecole des Beaux- Arts de
l'Indochine’, in 1930 and became adept at painting with gouache and ink on
silk, as well as oil on canvas. He proceeded to teach at the Hue’
National School (Lycée Français d Hue’), Hanoï in 1931. It was in 1937, before Mai Trung Thu left
for Vietnam to live in Paris, that he painted ‘La Jeune Fille De Hue’, (‘The
Young Hue Girl’) an oil on canvas. A Christies ‘lot essay’ for that
painting (by Jean-Francois Hubert) suggests that the painting’s subject was Mai
Trung Thu’s student at Hue’. There is the merest of hints of his fondness for
this student (though nothing untoward happened) in the back story, with Mai
Trung Thu returning to Vietnam in 1962 to look for her and, finding her, became
disillusioned by her being married and with a large family.
In the 1937 of Paris, France, Mai
Trung Thu entered the ‘International Exhibition of
Decorative Arts’ and, later that year, both
Mai Trung Thu and Le Pho left Vietnam to exhibit in various countries (Italia,
Belgium, USA and France) before finally settling in France joining Vu
Cao Dam who had arrived in 1931 and, later, joined by Le Thi Luu (1940).
While in Paris Mai Trung Thu participated
in annual exhibitions such as the Salon des Indépendants and Salon d'Automne (from
1938 to 1940), in 1941 he exhibited with Le Pho, in Algeria (1941), and then underwent military service in Mâcon, France. With
assistance from Mâcon’s notable Combaud family, Mai Trung Thu was commissioned to paint portraits for members of Mâconnaise
society. He was also commissioned to decorate the memorial chapel in Mâcon’s Saint-Pierre
church, and (returned to Paris in 1944.
Mai Trung Thu, who spent the greater part of his life living
in France, became a film maker and made a documentary concerning Ho Chi Min’s
visit to Paris, and another documentary of his own work. During the 1950s, with
professional representation by Jean-Françoise Apesteguy, Mai Trung Thu’s fame began
to grow and has been growing ever since. In 1974, he visited Vietnam again.
Mai Trung Thu has chiefly been known for his practically illustrative
images of Vietnamese women and families, sometimes gouache, on silk, and
occasionally oil on canvas. To some these images might represent a form of
Asian kitsch; to others they represent the artist’s longing both for tradition
and for his homeland, using knowledge gleaned from the west but using styles
more familiar to the east. Mai Trung Thu’s background in Chinese imagery, and
the traditions of Vietnam are given form and substance by his training in
western modern art and filtered through memory and expectations of a Vietnamese
artist living in Paris.
Mai Trung Thu died in
1980 of a heart attack, aged seventy four, and is buried in the cemetery of
Vanves commune (southwestern suburbs) Hauts de Seine, Paris France.
Both Le Pho (1907–2001)
who’s painting ‘Les deux enfants et les roses’ (an
Oil on canvas) recently sold for $50,000.00 in 2018, and
Mai Trung Thu who’s 1930 "Portrait de Mademoiselle Phuong"
sold for US$3.1 million this year (2021) have gained world
recognition since their days at the first intake at Vietnam’s first school of
art – ‘Ecole des Beaux- Arts de
l'Indochine’.
