Rating and value of paintings by Mai Thu

If you own a work by Mai Thu or after the artist, and would like to know its value, our state-approved experts and auctioneers will offer you their appraisal services.

Our specialists will carry out a free appraisal of your work, and provide you with a precise estimate of its value on the current market.

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Rating and value of the artist Mai Thu

The artist Mai Thu leaves behind a distinctive body of work, composed mainly of drawings and paintings. He is French-Vietnamese. Now, prices for his works are rising under auctioneers' hammers.

The price at which they sell on the art market ranges from €40 to €2,148,900, a significant gap but one that speaks volumes about the value that can be attributed to Mai Thu's works.

He is especially prized by buyers from Hong Kong, Vietnam and France. In 2021, an oil on canvas entitled Portrait de Mademoiselle Phuong was sold for €2,148,900, while it was estimated at between €805,840 and €999,240. Its value has exploded in recent years.

Order of value from a simple work to the most prestigious

Style and technique of artist Mai Thu   

Trung Thu Mai's style and technique are characterized by several aspects.

He makes extensive use of silk painting, a traditional Vietnamese technique that he modernizes by incorporating many Western influences.

He is also influenced by miniature painting and calligraphy, using delicate, precise strokes reminiscent of Asian art, with a very particular attention to detail.

His color palette is fairly soft, using harmonious pastel tones that reinforce a relatively peaceful and poetic atmosphere.

He uses fairly recurring subjects in his works : everyday scenes from Vietnam, portraits of women and children. The composition is quite balanced, carried by natural influences of Asian painting, with a fluid and natural organization of elements.

He uses mixed techniques, using gouache and ink on silk, to achieve effects of transparency and lightness.

Furthermore, the artist makes his own frames to better integrate the work into its space and accentuate its refined spaciousness.

His approach is quite sensitive, highlighting the elegance and grace of the subjects he depicts.  

The life of Mai Thu

Trung Thu Mai was a Vietnamese painter born in 1906. His father was a high-ranking dignitary at the Court of Hué. He studied at the Lycée Français in Hanoi and was part of the first graduating class of the city's Ecole des Beaux-Arts. As soon as he graduated, he became a drawing teacher at the Lycée de Hué.

In Vietman, he rubbed shoulders with the painters Vu Cao Dam, Nam Son Nguyen and Le Pho, with whom he travelled to Paris for the 1937 Decorative Arts Exhibition. His success was fairly immediate, as the public at the time was quite partial to Far Eastern painting.

He collaborated with UNICEF to contribute to peace and independence in Vietnam. To this end, he filmed President Ho Chi Minh during his visit to France.

He consistently refused to work with American galleries after this stance, but nevertheless abandoned his partnership with UNICEF, even though the organization had enabled him to achieve a certain notoriety.

His work is imbued with traditional Vietnamese music, which he plays himself and whose performers he depicts on his canvases. Throughout his career, he developed his own compositional technique: le pongé sur soie, where he uses flat tints and rubs of gouache on silk.

Focus on Young Girl with Lotus, Trung Thu Mai

In Young Girl with Lotus, Trung Thu Mai bases her work on a balanced composition where the central figure, a young girl holding a lotus, occupies space with grace and restraint.

The posture depicted is fluid and the curves quite delicate, making it possible to recall traditional Vietnamese art, among other prints and miniatures.

As opposed to more volumetric Western compositions, the image retains a certain flatness, with few marked shadows and a fairly subtle perspective.

Concerning colors and materials, the palette is dominated by pastel and earthy tones, reinforcing the soft, intimate atmosphere.

Painting on silk brings a rather singular texture, the pigments lightly penetrating the fiber, helping to give a transparent, light effect. The play of contrasts is quite subtle, with soothing chromatic harmonies rather than a brutal burst of color.

He treats the surface of the work so that it is almost smooth, with fairly gentle transitions between hues, and a fairly minimalist treatment of volume. Mai Thu suggests depth through the superimposition of patterns and the fluidity of lines, rather than through marked shading.

He pays particular attention to detail and floral motifs, lending an impression of delicacy - without breaking with the simplicity of the subject matter.

Through this work, Mai Thu is part of a movement that aims to reinterpret Vietnamese pictorial heritage by incorporating a Western influence, especially in the treatment of portraits.

The artist played a key role in the dissemination of Vietnamese art in the West, and took part in the exhibitions of the Indochina School of Fine Arts, being one of the first to introduce a refined, poetic aesthetic.

His approach would inspire other Vietnamese artists, who were also seeking a balance between tradition and modernity, and between East and West, not least in contemporary silk painting.

Although Young Girl with Lotus illustrates Vietnamese tradition in its medium and subject, the work stands out for its rather subtle pictorial treatment, which is influenced by Western art.
The artist thus succeeds in creating a unique visual language, where the softness of the forms and the symbolic richness of the floral motif manage to transcend the simple portrait to become a poetic evocation of Vietnam.

Mai Thu's imprint on his period

Mai Thu was not a well-known artist of his time in France, but critics took notice of him during his lifetime. His work blends Eastern and Western influences, which today is highly appreciated by the art market. To this day, most of his works are held by private collectors.

Through his work, he redefines silk painting, elevating it to a refined art form that blends Vietnamese tradition with Western influences.

He adopts a more pictorial and expressive approach than the Chinese or Japanese traditions, in which calligraphy dominates most of the time.

His fluid, delicate style is helping to influence a new generation of Vietnamese artists seeking to renew this technique.

He weaves a genuine link between East and West as he has settled in France, and has played a key role in disseminating Vietnamese art to Western audiences.

His work has thus contributed to forging an idealized image of Vietnam, which blends exoticism and nostalgic sweetness. His poetic, narrative approach helped influence Vietnamese painters in the diaspora, who picked up on his interest in fine line and diffused light. Mai Thu popularized a harmonious vision of pre-colonial Vietnam - one that is still anchored in the collective memory today and taken up by many artists.

His work helped preserve and reinvent a certain Vietnamese cultural identity in the context of its time, marked by modernization and colonialism.

Today, the artist stands out on the international auction scene, with his works reaching record sums in recent years.

Recognizing the artist's signature

Mai Thu signs his works most of the time, in French and Chinese, and marks his watercolors with a seal. However, it is essential to have your work appraised to be sure of its originality. What's more ; there are naturally many copies.

Knowing the value of a work

If you happen to own a work by Mai Thu or after the artist, don't hesitate to request a free appraisal using our form on our website.

A member of our team of experts and certified auctioneers will contact you promptly to provide you with an estimate of the market value of your work, not forgetting to send you ad hoc information about it.

If you wish to sell your work, you will also be accompanied by our specialists in order to benefit from alternatives to sell it at the best possible price, taking into account market inclinations.