Lot n° 168
Estimation :
300000 - 500000
EUR
Result without fees
Result
: 300 000EUR
LÊ PHO (1907-2001).
School of Fine Arts of... - Lot 168 - Lynda Trouvé
LÊ PHO (1907-2001).
School of Fine Arts of Indochina. Class of 1930.
Young women with a bouquet.
Gouache and ink on silk signed in lower right in ideograms and cursive letters in its period frame in velvet and gilded wood in imitation of bamboo.
Around 1955.
Size: 42x41 cm. Dimensions with frame: 55x55 cm.
Provenance: Romanet Gallery, personal collection of the gallery owner.
The work will appear in the catalog raisonné of the artist being prepared by Mr Alain Le Kim, the artist's successor.
Lê Pho settled permanently in France in 1937.
The meeting with Matisse was decisive and initiated a pictorial revolution in his work. Later, other successive events will come to upset its life while making evolve its art.
Resolutely influenced by the impressionists in a general way, by Bonnard also, his style which translated the universe of the Confucian scholars moved towards a rich palette of colors.
The work that we present translates this eventful artistic journey, and marks the culmination of a pictorial research typical of the "Romanet period".
The melted colors of the early period are no longer appropriate here, the contrasts are marked. The shimmering bouquet magnified by the wucai porcelain vase invades the space to the point of occupying a central place in the composition. More than a portrait of women, the subject is the preparation of a bouquet towards which all the lines converge.
The very tight framing of this scene makes it a soft and intimate snapshot, a moment suspended in the elegant gesture of the woman in the foreground. Nothing seems to be able to disturb this latent melancholy imbued with poetry.
While the young woman in the background seems to be busy, holding in her left hand something to embellish the imposing bouquet, the woman in the foreground has a decidedly different attitude. Pensive, leaning with her right hand on the table, she delicately grasps a delphinium flower between her fingers. How can we not make the link with the floral symbolism in which the delphinium is the flower of attachment and tenderness, just as the color blue evokes melancholy and love? The silent language of flowers is well known to Le Pho, who always gives them pride of place in his compositions, especially during this period. Flowers, which underline the tender expression of female faces, occupy a central place in Vietnamese culture. Floral references are abundant in texts, omnipresent during the Tet and widely represented in everyday language.
The title of the painting could be Mat hoa literally "flowery face" qualifying a beautiful female face.
As always with Lê Pho, Vietnamese culture emerges, the form changing, the background constant and impregnated with the heritage of a scholar as a link to a tradition that the artist has always known how to preserve.
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