LE PHO (Vietnam 1907 - France 2001)
VARIOUS PROPERTIES
LE PHO (Vietnam 1907 - France 2001)

Le bain de mer (The bath at the sea)

Details
LE PHO (Vietnam 1907 - France 2001)
Le bain de mer (The bath at the sea)
signed 'Le Pho' and signed again in Chinese and stamped with an artist's seal (lower right); titled in French on reverse
silk laid down on paper
35 x 23 in. (90 x 58 cm.)

Lot Essay

Whatever the subject of Le Pho's painting, it is transformed immediately into an authentic spectacle of beauty and joie de vivre: everything is illuminated by light, luminous tones, bathed in a delicate grace, filled with human warmth, gentleness, dreams and lyricism.

This is true to his Impressionistic garden scene and floral composition and equally true to his silk work as exemplified by the present lot. As a material, the smooth and soft surface of the silk gives an immediate 'softening' and 'shimmering' effect to the subject and in this instance, the delicate skin of the bathers glows in the dark and relatively barren setting.

Le Pho did not lavish the background with much details. Instead, inspired by the Renaissance landscape, which is a wild romantic landscape. The landscape in the present lot is a misty one which is tinged blue by the filter effect of the atmosphere, thus denoting an imaginary world at once fantastic and real, giving the painting both a terrestrial and a spiritual dimension.

In this work, air, light and the subjects are an indissoluble whole, representing as much as a realistic visual treat as it is evocative of poetical emotion.

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