Modern and Contemporary Art

The painting on silk, Mother and Children in Landscape, by Vietnamese artist Lê Thị Lựu, depicts a doting mother in the traditional Vietnamese ao dai dress, surrounded by her three young children. All of the figures focus their attention on the young boy in blue playing with a pink lotus flower, an important symbol in Vietnamese culture, standing for purity, serenity, and resilience. In this portrait of a loving family in a quaint and detailed landscape, the powdery texture of the silk imbues the scene with a delicate and comforting haze, which echoes the bond between the mother and her children. A triangular composition, with the lotus in its center, was a recurring theme throughout Lê Thị Lựu’s career.

Lê Thị Lựu was born in Tho Khoi, Ha Bac Province in 1911. She traveled extensively throughout Vietnam during her childhood, due to her father’s work as a civil servant. Finishing her formal education at age 14, Lê Thị Lựu decided to prepare for the entrance examinations for L’École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine and was admitted as one of the school’s first female students. The school was founded in 1924 by the French painter Victor Tardieu, teacher of well-known painters Mai Trung Thứ, Lê Phổ and Vũ Cao Đàm, and who later became close friends and colleagues of Lê Thị Lựu and greatly influenced her career. 

Prompted by the experiences of these Vietnamese painters in France, the artist visited the country in the 1940s with her husband Ngo The Tan, and was forced to stay when the circumstances of war blocked their way home. She became an influential teacher in art schools there, all the while continuing her own practice. In the 1950s, she returned to a careful study of Vietnamese culture and began painting with ink and gouache on silk, as in Mother and Children in Landscape. She primarily focused on mothers and children as her subject matter during this time, exemplified in this lovely painting from 1962. Lê Thị Lựu retired from teaching in 1971 and moved to the south of France, where she passed away in 1988. 

The work of these Vietnamese artists exemplifies the close connections between East and West at this time, with many artists in Europe also studying the arts of Asian cultures to galvanize their own artistic practices. While the group used themes clearly stemming from their homeland, the paintings appealed to a Western market at the time. The present rediscovery and renewed interest in these works has a more wide-ranging, international scope, as paintings like the present lot continue to enchant and delight viewers today. Presented at auction for the very first time, Freeman’s is pleased to offer Lê Thị Lựu’s Mother and Children in Landscape, from a prominent private Newport, Rhode Island collection.