Vietnamese Oil Paintings

Oil painting reached Vietnam through the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine, founded in Hanoi in 1925 by the French painter Victor Tardieu on the advice of the Vietnamese artist Nam Sơn. Tardieu placed great weight on oil technique, and Tô Ngọc Vân became the first Vietnamese master of the medium; his Young Lady with Lily (1943) is still among the best-known Vietnamese paintings.

In twenty years the school trained more than a hundred painters, sculptors and architects — Nguyễn Gia Trí, Tô Ngọc Vân, Nguyễn Phan Chánh, Lê Phổ and Mai Trung Thứ among them — who became the founders of modern Vietnamese art. Their successors are still working in oil today.

Compared with lacquer, oil on canvas keeps the mark of the brush, dries in days rather than months, and can travel rolled, which makes large formats far easier to send abroad. It suits painters who work quickly and directly from what they see.

Every work below is an original by a Vietnamese artist, sold with a certificate of authenticity and shipped worldwide.