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| Hue young woman |
Hue girls in Thu’s painting
“Ms. Phuong’s Portrait" and "A Woman in Conical Hat by the River” are his two oil masterpieces portraying Hue girls. In “Ms. Phuong’s Portrait” (painted in 1930, his first year in Hue) Mai Trung Thu used soft colors and an isosceles triangle composition to evoke peace and carefreeness for the scenery and character.
The oil painting "The Woman in Conical Hat by the River" was painted in 1937, his last year in Vietnam. In the painting is a Hue young woman wearing a jade-blue ao dai with a sweet oval face and big honest eyes. A curl of hair falls on her cheek, giving the viewer a lighthearted feeling of peacefulness.
"The woman stands by the river at noon, wearing a light green ao dai. In the sun she looks as if she were carved out of jade. Her face, which is partly hidden in the conical hat, has a touch of mystery. Thu’s coloring and the way he depicted the character bring peacefulness to the scenery,” commented the researcher Nicolas Henni-Trinh.
Besides those two paintings, Mai Trung Thu also painted a lot about Hue girls, such as "The Girl Playing the Moon Lute,” “The Girl Composing Poetry,” etc. The painting "Hue Young Woman” is very impressive. The slender woman with her hair in a bun looks charming and sexy in soft light blue ao dai. According to the painter To Ngoc Van, what the viewer like about the painting is the young woman with her wet eyes as if she is about to cry.
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| The woman in her conical hat by the Huong river |
In Mai Trung Thu's paintings, girls are often slender wearing ao dai and their hair in a bun. Especially they all have dreamy melancholy eyes. According to the painter Tran Van Can, no one can paint human eyes better than Mai Trung Thu. He painted girls who have eyes as clear as the Huong river, but a little bit sad and deep. That is the delicate discreet beauty and the calmness of Hue girls in Vy Da area or Kim Long gardens. They tempt people not by the luxurious beauty but by their modest internal beauty.
Colors of old Hue
Mai Trung Thu’s father was Mai Trung Cat, a high-ranking official of the Nguyen dynasty. In his childhood, Thu lived in Hue with his parents. As an adult, he was one of the first graduates from the Indochina College of Fine Arts to come to Hue to teach drawing at Quoc Hoc High School. Like many other artists, he was tempted not only by the beauty of gentle, discreet Hue girls but also by the landscape in Hue with mountains, the Huong river, houses nestling in lush gardens, quiet royal mausoleums, and ancient pagodas, etc.
According to Nicolas Henni-Trinh Duc, Mai Trung Thu excelled in making his narrative paintings. Through his own way of coloring and his skillful drawing strokes, he depicted the daily life of Hue in the past. Hue can be recognized through his paintings about a Hue-styled tea party, a sitting young woman beside her cushion, a woman on a boat, a Hue girl holding her book, old-styled boats, etc. In the painting "Drinking tea in Hue” (1937), he painted the three men sitting on a mat sipping tea in the shade in the garden with a child sitting beside listening. Hue can be recognized through the modest but majestic gate, or the presence of many imperial cushions.
During his years in Hue, Mai Trung Thu spent a lot of energy researching and painting ca Hue musicians. (Ca Hue is a special kind of traditional chamber music in Hue.) Some of the paintings were later in the collection of emperor Bao Dai, and were displayed at Kien Trung Pavilion along with ones by other artists. After 1937, Mai Trung Thu participated in many painting exhibitions in many countries around the world such as Italy, Belgium, the United States, etc. Since 1937, he had lived in France and painted about girls, children, villages with leafy roofs, temples, etc. as reminders of his fatherland with memories of innocent and carefree childhood. He was known as one of the four “Vietnamese extraordinary artists in Europe,” Pho - Thu - Luu - Dam (Le Pho - Mai Trung Thu - Le Thi Luu - Vu Cao Dam).
Hue fortunately still keeps a painting by Mai Trung Thu at the Hue Museum of Fine Arts. That’s the painting "The Girl by the Bird Cage,” portraying a naked girl feeding her bird in the cage. On the paining is his autograph, “Dearly presented to Cuc Diem, XII 78 (December 1978), Mai Trung Thu".
In her youth, Diem Phung Thi lived in France and learned how to paint for some time with Mai Trung Thu. Some time later, the famous artist presented her his painting “The Girl by the Bird Cage.” That painting had been hung in her own room for a very long time. The precious painting is now kept in Hue, the place where his talent began, his paintings are always remembered, and his paintings belong.