Lot Essay
The prevalent artistic theme in Vietnam between 1925-1945 was poetic realism which accentuated the representation of nature, people, landscapes, together with the life, customs and habits of the country; in brief, the moral and material beauty as seen and experienced by the painter. It was an artistic tendency somewhat affiliated with the 19th century French Romantic-Realist BArbizon School headed by Theodore Rousseu. Such was the artistic principle propounded by Inguimberty, the man who exerted the greatest influence on the Vietnamese students during the first epoch of acedemic Vietnamese painting.
Obsessed with precision, Inguimberty's peasants and landscapes were presented on his canvases only after preliminary study with charcoal drawings. HEalways ran after the models and took measurements with a plumb-line thread to determine the position of equilibrium at each movement of the feet on the ground. He used colours with great refinement and showed great sensitivity in representing a soft green lawn stained with a little of black mud or a piece of white chapel wall standing out against a background of white clouds.
His constant source of inspiration was the working peasants in a vast ricefield which to him represented the moral and material beauty of Vietnam.
Obsessed with precision, Inguimberty's peasants and landscapes were presented on his canvases only after preliminary study with charcoal drawings. HEalways ran after the models and took measurements with a plumb-line thread to determine the position of equilibrium at each movement of the feet on the ground. He used colours with great refinement and showed great sensitivity in representing a soft green lawn stained with a little of black mud or a piece of white chapel wall standing out against a background of white clouds.
His constant source of inspiration was the working peasants in a vast ricefield which to him represented the moral and material beauty of Vietnam.