One of the rarest and most historically important surviving works by Nguyen Phan Chanh.

Nguyen Phan Chanh’s La Jeune Fille Lavant des Légumes (Young Girl Washing Vegetables), painted in 1931, remains among the most poetic and intimate masterpieces of early modern Vietnamese art. Executed in gouache and ink on silk, the painting reflects the singular visual language developed at the Fine Arts School of Indochina under Victor Tardieu, where Vietnamese tradition and modern pictorial sensibility began to meet with remarkable subtlety.

What makes this work particularly significant is not only its serene composition, but also its early journey to France in 1931, where it became part of a historic effort to introduce Vietnamese art to European audiences. In 1932, the work was illustrated in the celebrated French magazine L’Illustration, alongside several other paintings by Nguyen Phan Chanh, affirming the growing recognition of Vietnamese modern art within international cultural circles.

Nearly a century later, the restrained poetry of the composition, the silence of the figure, and the meditative simplicity of daily life continue to define why Nguyen Phan Chanh occupies such a singular place in the history of Southeast Asian contemporary art.

Nguyen Phan Chanh (Vietnam, 1892-1984)
La Jeune Fille Lavant des Légumes
gouache and ink on silk
63 x 50cm.
painted in 1931
on seal of the artist

Literature
L’Illustration, No. 4683, 1932 (illustrated, unpaged)
Arts du Vietnam, 2002, Jean-François Hubert

Provenance
Private Collection, France
First sold to Docteur Montel the same year, 1931
Sent by the artist Nguyen Phan Chanh to France in 1931