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\n\tJoseph Inguimberty (1869-1971)\nSigned ‘INGUIMBERTY’ (lower right)
\noil on canvas
\n129.5 x 162 cm. (51x 63 \u00be in.)
\nPainted circa 1935\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\tJoseph Inguimberty: The Founding Father In Love With The Vietnam Land<\/strong><\/p>\n\t Joseph Inguimberty was born in Marseille on January 18th, 1896.<\/p>\n When it came to painting he always found inspiration in his father’s native hometown in Provence and his mother’s in Franche-Comt\u00e9. As a student of Marseilles’ \u00c9cole des Beaux Arts, he vacillated between Architecture and Painting but eventually selected the latter.<\/p>\n In 1913, the artist was admitted into the \u00c9cole Nationale Sup\u00e9rieure des Arts D\u00e9coratifs in Paris. Conscripted in 1915, he was wounded in 1917 and subsequently received the Croix de Guerre. As with all men of his generation, the war profoundly marked him.<\/p>\n Once the war was over, Inguimberty continued his study at the Arts D\u00e9coratifs under Eug\u00e8ne Morand. He travelled to Holland in 1920 and 1921, as well as Belgium in 1921-1922. These trips inspired him to paint large canvases depicting the life of miners, particularly those from Charleroi.<\/p>\n In 1922, he received the Blumenthal prize<\/a>. Inguimberty moved back to Marseilles leaving Belgium where he painted works such as: \u00ab Les D\u00e9bardeurs de Marseille \u00bb, dated 1924 but in fact completed in 1922. The work was awarded the Prix National de Peinture as well as \u00ab Les D\u00e9bardeurs du Pl\u00e2tre \u00bb and \u00ab Les D\u00e9bardeurs des Arachides \u00bb, these were triptychs honoring the port of Marseilles, commonly known as the \u00ab Door to the Orient \u00bb.<\/p>\n In 1924 a travel bursary enabled Inguimberty to visit Italy, Greece and Egypt. It was that same year he heard about the reopening of the Hanoi’s \u00c9cole des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine under the direction of a fellow compatriot Victor Tardieu<\/a>. He applied for a teaching position and was assigned the post of Professeur of Decorative Arts.<\/p>\n The year 1925 marked the beginning of a twenty-one years old love affair between the artist and Vietnam. During his stay in Vietnam, Inguimberty fully lived his multiple roles as an art teacher, a pupil of the local custom, and a promoter of Vietnam’s indigenous lacquer technique. For all his achievements, he was described as a \u00ab Vietnamese painter of French origin \u00bb in the official Vietnamese art history (Quang Phong, Vietnamese Contemporary Art, Hanoi, 1996).<\/p>\n For all his twenty one years in Vietnam, Inguimberty exerted considerable influence on the students under his tutelage. He taught not only the Western techniques of oil and perspective, he also taught and promoted Vietnam’s traditional lacquer technique. Beyond teaching, he never stopped painting and left behind an impressive and original body of work.<\/p>\n The list of Inguimberty’s prized students is impressive: Mai Thu, Le Pho, Nguyen Phan Chanh, To Ngoc Van, Vu Cao Dam, Le Thi Luu<\/a>, Nguyen Gia Tri<\/a>, Nguyen Khang<\/a>, Nguyen Sang, Bui Xuan Phai and Nguyen Tu Nghiem; many of them are considered as Vietnam’s best painters which was a real testimony to Inguimberty’s importance both as a teacher and as an artist.<\/p>\n All these painters benefited from a rigorous formal training as well as from a convivial closeness with their teacher. Inguimberty believed in demonstration rather than explanation. Even if he did not fully liked artists such as Matisse, Rouault and Dufy he still encouraged his students to study their works and advised them to analyse them without necessarily copying them.<\/p>\n He encouraged his students to follow him in outdoors painting sessions to depict the landscape and capture the effects of natural light and shadow. As a practitioner of the \u00c9cole Pleinairiste<\/a>, Inguimberty worked in a similar way to Corot, Courbet, Rousseau and Millet. These artists were immersed in the aesthetics of Realism and Impressionism, aiming at genre painting. Rice paddies, peasants, sky, rain, humidity of the tropics, as well as the sensual and solid beauty of his human subjects, were the captivating qualities Inguimberty considered.<\/p>\n While Tardieu gave precedence to studio work, precision, use of model and a return to indigenous practices (painting on silk), Inguimberty, on the other hand, favored the study of light. If Tardieu was inspired by nation and history, Inguimberty, however, turned to nature and geography. It is from these complimentary approaches that the genius of the XXth century Vietnamese Painting emerged.<\/p>\n It is interesting to note that most Victor Tardieu’s best students Le Pho, Mai Thu, and Vu Cao Dam, Le Thi Luu left Vietnam for France in search of new challenges, whereas Inguimberty’s favourites, To Ngoc Van, Nguyen Tu Nghiem and Tran Van Can remained in Vietnam.<\/p>\n He particularly liked working in the village of Kim Lien near Hanoi and, in 1927 he submitted two paintings to the Salon de la Nationale: \u00ab Tonkin \u00bb and \u00ab Femmes de l’Annam \u00bb. Later, in early 1929 (26 January – 2 February) he held his first solo exhibition in Hanoi \u00ab Paysages et Figures du Delta Tonkinois \u00bb. He also kept sending paintings to France as he was exhibiting works depicting Marseilles and Tonkin in the Galerie Charpentier in Paris.<\/p>\n In the meantime, Inguimberty’s interest in lacquer developed into a passion. He sought to propel lacquer away from its decorative function to a more creative one: lacquer became a medium of expression as the artist explored its range of colors.<\/p>\n Inguimberty’s students took to the medium with alacrity. To name just a few examples, Le Pho, Nguyen Khang and Tran Van Can proved to be particularly talented as he presented his work \u00ab To Salute the moving of the candidate to the Mandarinat Exams \u00bb. He was clearly ahead of Nguyen Gia Tri who submitted a silk painting later on regarded as Vietnam’s best lacquer painter.<\/p>\nFor Inguimberty, Vietnam was to remain the source of his inspiration.<\/h4>\n