LÊ PHÔ' - Lot 46

Lot 46
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Estimation :
120000 - 150000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 156 000EUR
LÊ PHÔ' - Lot 46
LÊ PHÔ' For this lot, we invite bidders to contact the auction house to register before the sale: contact@arp-auction.com For this lot, we invite bidders to contact the auction house to register before the sale: contact@arp-auction.com LÊ PHÔ' (1907-2001) "Young boy with a golden bird Lacquer on black panel, silver and gold highlights Signed in the upper left corner and dated 1936 (Cracks and lifts) Signed at the top left and dated 1936 (cracks and lifts) H 69 x W 55 cm - H 27 1/8 x W 21 5/8 in PROVENANCE : Former Louis Blanchet collection A certificate of authenticity of the work by the artist's successor, Mr Alain Le Kim will be delivered to the buyer. Lê Phổ "Cậu bé bên chú chim vàng" Tranh sơn mài, chữ ký ở góc trên bên trái và năm sáng tác 1936 XUẤT XỨ: Thuộc bộ sưu tập cũ của Louis Charles Blanchet Thừa kế cho chủ sở hữu hiện tại Son of the viceroy of Tonkin, Lé Pho was a leading artist of the first graduating class of the Indochina School of Fine Arts (1925 - 1930), who very early on showed a predisposition for painting. Spotted by Victor Tardieu, the director of the school, he became one of the best students and quickly assimilated all the techniques taught by the teachers. Although the Indochina Fine Arts School was designed to train young artists in Western techniques, it also valued traditional Vietnamese arts such as painting on silk or lacquer. Lacquer is a material that is obtained after preparing the plant sap of the lacquer tree, a tree that grows abundantly in a province north of Hanoi, to which turpentine is added. This long and tedious manufacturing process was taught to the students with the desire to rediscover an ancestral know-how. Lé Pho produced very few lacquers but within the Hanoi School of Fine Arts, together with his friend Tran Quand TRAN (Ngym), they modernized the techniques by bringing notable innovations and promoted them in the company of Joseph Inguimberty and Alix Aymé, two French artists specialized in lacquer, teachers at the Indochina School of Fine Arts. In 1931, thanks to Victor Tardieu who asked him to become his assistant, Lé Pho participated in the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris. He worked on the lacquer room of the Angkor Temple Pavilion, reconstituted for the occasion, with young artists such as Le Van De, Thang Tran Phenh, Do Duc Thuan and To Ngoc Van and exhibited a spectacular black, red and gold lacquer panel entitled "Paysage Tonquinois Sai Son, province de Son Tay". He stayed in Paris for a year to take courses at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and then traveled to Italy where he discovered the primitive painters who had a strong influence on his work. He returned to Indochina in 1933, and thanks to Victor Tardieu, he taught at the Indochina School of Fine Arts in Hanoi until 1936, a fertile year during which he created several masterful lacquers, including our panel "Young Boy with a Golden Bird". This work is a hymn to nature, in which a young man and the bird are in perfect harmony. The innocence of the young man in this sublimated vegetation, delicately receiving in his right hand the bird, represents freedom, love and the sweetness of a suspended moment. We can only salute the genius of the artist, who knew how to combine the ancestral traditions of lacquer in Indochina, and the French European decorative arts, including the work of Jean Dunand. That same year, he made large lacquer panels to decorate the stand of the Indochina section of the Paris International Exhibition in 1937 which will mark the end of a magnificent series. 1937 will be a turning point for Lé Pho; director of the Indochinese section of the Paris Universal Exhibition, he leaves Indochina to settle permanently in France like his painter friends, Mai Thu, Vu Cao Dam and Le Thi Luu. The lacquer of Lé Pho that we are presenting, totally new on the art market, comes from the collection of Louis Charles Blanchet. Louis Charles Blanchet Born in 1897 into a family of teachers, Louis Charles Blanchet decided very early on to leave his family and go on an adventure in Indochina. He enlisted in the army during the First World War and met his wife Antonia Delorme in Hanoi in 1919; she was the daughter of Eugène Delorme, a prosperous businessman who had been living in Hanoi for many years and was married to a Vietnamese woman named Thi Kîen Lê. Thanks to his father-in-law's connections, he joined the Banque de l'Indochine as an employee and quickly climbed the ladder to become in 1926 the proxy of the branch of the Banque de l'Indochine in Nam Dinh. In 1934, he became the head of the Quynhon branch and in 1936, he became the head of the branch in Hué, the capital of Indochina. Hué, the capital of Annam; it was in this year that he bought the lacquerware we are presenting. In 1936,
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