10 000 € DEPOSIT WILL BE REQUIRED / CAUTION SERA... Lot 214

10 000 € DEPOSIT WILL BE REQUIRED / CAUTION SERA DEMANDÉE Lê Thi Luu (1911-1988 )Young girl redoing her mat in front of a low table on which rests a bouquet of flowers. In the background, a landscape painting. Ink and gouache on silk. Signature and seal painted in the upper left. 63,5 x 48 cmStaining and traces of humidity at the foot. Exhibition: Salon de l'Union des Femmes Peintres, Sculpteurs et Graveurs in Paris in 1961. Bibliography: Illustrated in black and white in the book by collector Thuy Khué Lê Thị Lựu, ấn tượng hoàng hôn (Lê Thi Luu, Twilight Impression), 2018, page 72. Lê Thi Lu'u was a Vietnamese painter born on January 19, 1911 in Tho Khoi in Bac-Ninh (now Ha Bac) province in northern Vietnam. She received from her father a traditional and very strict education. Despite good school results, she decided not to follow a conventional education, but to fulfill her desire to become a painter by entering the School of Fine Arts of Indochina, a school created by Victor Tardieu in Hanoi in 1924. In this, she went totally against the usual principles of the young Vietnamese woman of the time, who had to obey and devote herself to her father, then to her husband, and thus to her family . She joined the school in 1927; it was there that she met Victor Tardieu (1870-1937) and Joseph Inguimberty (1896-1971), her teachers, but above all the most renowned painters of the Hanoi School of Fine Arts: Le Pho, Mai Trung Thu, Vu Cao dam, Le Van De, Nguyen Phan Chanh and Nguyen Gia Tri. Painters with whom she forged unfailing bonds of friendship, in particular with her three main companions on the road to fame in France: Le Pho, Mai Trung Thu and Vu Cao dam . From 1933 to 1939, she taught drawing at the Lycée du Protectorat, the École Normale de Jeunes Filles, the École Dentellière and the Lycée Bong Bang in Hanoi, Saigon and Gia Dinh, but she dreamed of Paris. It was a professional engagement in Paris of her husband, Ngô Thê Tân, that allowed her to fulfill her wish. The war period took place between France from 1940 to 1942, Guinea and then a return to France in 1945. At this time, she invested herself in the independence of her native country. In the 50s, she resumed her career as a painter. She exhibited for the first time in 1961 at the Union of Women Painters, Sculptors and Engravers of Paris. She exhibited three paintings listed in the exhibition catalogue as follows: 353. Maternity (Painting). 354. Young girl (Silk). 355. The humble excuse (Silk). It would seem, according to Thuy Khué Lê Thi Luu's book, Impression Crépusculaire, that two of the paintings were sold to an American collector and the third to a gallery in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. It is undoubtedly the Le Chapelin gallery which was located at 71 Faubourg Saint Honoré and which exhibited the painter. The painting we are presenting is reproduced in black and white in Thuy Khué's book on page 72, so it is indeed the painting titled Young Girl which was acquired by the gallery in 1961. This was a new beginning for Le Thi Luu and she continued to work on a silk support with a strong preference for subjects of young women and children who, as the specialist in Vietnamese painting Jean-François Hubert says: "...for her, are cause and effect, and the highest form of humanity. Thanks to Jean François Hubert for his precious information and Kim N'Guyen F. for her translations.