Le Pho (1907-2001) Lot n° 36

La blanchisseuse Oil on silk mounted on masonite, signed lower right, titled on reverse 63 × 44 cm - 24 3/4 x 17 1/4 in. Collection of Dr V. This collection tells the story of a young Vietnamese student who arrived in Paris around 1950 and the Vietnamese artist Lê Phổ, who had already settled there. The painter and his wife, renowned throughout the years for having a table in Paris open very generously for newcomers from Vietnam, received many young uprooted students. Regularly in the early 1950s, young V. was one of these guests. A beautiful relationship marked by respect was built. Years later, the student, now a well established doctor, wished to pay tribute to his former hosts and returned to see Lê Phổ in his studio. He acquires these paintings, which he proudly exhibits in his house and invites the artist and his wife for a summer lunch in his beautiful home. The washerwomen installed around the laundries and then the washboats have marked the previous centuries. Washerwomen is a generic term that includes laundresses and laundrywomen who differ in the nature of the laundry they wash. The first ones take care of the fine linen (lace dresses, Sunday clothes, costume) while the second ones clean the less delicate, coarser linen (rags, sheets, common clothes). This theme inspired many French artists of the 19th century, some of whom immortalized the hard work of the workers, while others showed the complicity of these women at work. In Blanchisseuse, although of Vietnamese origin, Lê Phổ, deals with a very Francophile pictorial subject. Marked by the discovery of plein air painting, the Impressionists focused on painting from the motif. Although probably painted in the studio, the Impressionist influence can be read in this work. A young woman is bent over a pier, holding a cloth in her hands that she is soaking. On either side of her are two baskets of laundry. The scenery made of lush vegetation overlooking the tranquility of the water is reminiscent of impressionist paintings. The colorful palette also echoes this movement. The different shades of green, blue and yellow undulate under the brush of the Master. However, the artist manages to differentiate himself from his predecessors with a unique vision. His Vietnamese origins can be read and bring a different reading. Thus, the model takes up the Asian standards. The young woman wears an áo dài and her features evoke those of Vietnamese women. The use of silk also brings an innovative vision to a classically European subject. A medium he learned to use during his training at the Hanoi School of Fine Arts and which he practiced for several decades. Silk brings a unique softness to this composition. Far from the exhausted worker of a Toulouse-Lautrec, Lê Phổ renews the genre with a more delicate and charming vision of the laundress.