Mai Trung Thu

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’.