An oil-on-silk painting that sold for 176,400 euros ($186,000) in late April was part of Sotheby’s ‘Indochine Sale’ auction house of nearly 50 depictions of early 20th-century Vietnam’s countryside century.
The unsigned lacquer painting above, “Landscape of Northern Vietnam”, depicts three farmers against mountains and rice fields. It is unsigned but belonged to artists from the Hanoi College of Fine Arts, an art school in Hanoi that was originally established under French colonial rule in 1925.
It sold for 94,500 euros.
The painting was part of the auction house’s “Indochina Sale” of nearly 50 picturesque early 20th-century depictions of northern villages and the suburbs of Saigon in lacquer and oil paintings .
“Itinerant Scene in Tonkin” by the artist Le Thy (1919-1961) was produced in the 1940s.
The 61.3 x 120.5 cm painting depicts two women wearing ao you than (four-part robe) and a man pulling a horse-drawn carriage. It was sold for 17,640 euros.
Dinh Minh’s “Northern Vietnamese Village Scene” was painted in the 1950s. It shows an afternoon when a farmer returns home with a horse. It was sold for 5,670 euros.
“In the Rice Fields” was made in the 1960s.
The work of Thanh Le (1919-2003) was acquired by a French collector during an exhibition of the artist in Paris in the 1960s. It was sold for 3,276 euros.
“Village by the River” by Tran Ha (1911-1974) depicts the daily life of the inhabitants of southern Vietnam in the 1960s. Sotheby’s estimates its price between 3,000 and 5,000 euros.
“Women carrying firewood” by Nguyen Mai Thu in 1934, another scene from the countryside of northern Vietnam, sold for 11,340 euros.
“Village scene in northern Vietnam” by Tran Van Tho, a painting on silk produced in the 1950s, sold for 9,540 euros.
Sold for 1,134 euros, these two oil paintings by Tran Van Giang depict the landscape of the outskirts of HCMC in the 1960s.
“Flower vendors near Hoan Kiem Lake” by Phung Fu was sold for 176,400 euros. The oil on silk painting, made in 1936, shows an idyllic scene far from downtown Hanoi today.
Sotheby’s, an American multinational founded in Britain and headquartered in New York, is one of the world’s largest brokers of fine art, jewelry and collectables.