Christie’s Hong Kong’s evening auction on May 24 brought 75 consignments, including four silk paintings by great Vietnamese artists, including “Dyers at Work” by Nguyen Phan Chanh, “Young Lady Tying Her Scarf” and “The Blue Bowl” by Le Pho, “Mona Lisa” by Mai Trung Thu.
After hammering, Le Pho’s “Young Lady Tying Her Scarf” was sold for more than 1.11 million USD (equivalent to 8.65 million HKD), which is close to the previous prediction.
“Mona Lisa” by Mai Trung Thu was sold for 724,000 USD (equivalent to 5.625 million HKD), far exceeding the prediction.
In April, Mai Trung Thu’s oil painting on canvas entitled “Portrait of Mademoiselle Phuong” was sold at an auction of Sotheby’s Hong Kong for a record price of 3.1 million USD, the highest price paid for Vietnamese art.
The remaining two Vietnamese paintings, “The Blue Bowl” by Le Pho and “Dyers at Work” by Nguyen Phan Chanh, were respectively sold for about 354,000 USD (2.7 million HKD) and 563,000 USD (4.375 million HKD).
Before the auction, the painting “Mona Lisa” attracted the attention of the art-loving community in Vietnam because it is a derivative work, inspired by the painting “Mona Lisa” by the great Italian painter Leonardo Da Vinci.
Along with “Young Lady Tying Her Scarf,” “Mona Lisa” was predicted to make the auction more dramatic than the other two paintings by Le Pho and Nguyen Phan Chanh.
After a record of 3.1 million USD, critics evaluated and predicted that Mai Trung Thu’s paintings would continue to inflate prices. Among collectors, the higher the purchase price, the higher the subsequent sale price.
The remaining two paintings by Le Pho and Nguyen Phan Chanh:
