A highly significant and rare silk painting by Vietnamese maestro Mai Trung Thu, Coquetterie depicts two young women admiring their necklaces. The composition of the present lot is undoubtedly a reinvention of the iconic Portrait of Gabrielle d’Estrés and her sister Duchess de Villars, a painting produced by the Fontainebleau School in 1594. The work portrays Gabrielle d’Estrées, the favorite of Henri IV (1553-1610), and one of her sisters, who pinches Gabrielle, an act often believed to symbolize the latter’s pregnancy with Henri IV’s illegitimate child. Mai Thu, who was exposed to the more overt sensuality rendered by his contemporaries in Paris in the mid-20th century but maintained a conservative deportment, resonated with the discreet and symbolic hints that described forbidden romance during the Italian Renaissance.
Aptly titled Coquetterie, the painting presents a scene staged for voyeurism, as the ladies are seated in their private quarters. However, unlike the nude sisters who unabashedly turn towards the viewer, Mai Thu’s subjects, garbed in bright ao dais, are more modest in their dalliance. Much like the Fontainbleau School work, which explores the boundaries between image and reality by employing the trompe-l'oeil technique, Mai Thu dexterously plays with forced perspective in his inclusion of blue curtains flanking the work, placed behind a hanging, red banner that hovers above them. Mai Thu echoes the bathtub drapery used in the Fontainbleau School work by placing patterned scarves hanging on the wooden chairs.
Executed in 1966, the present lot bears the artist’s vivacious and opaque color palette that encapsulates this celebrated period in his oeuvre. The spirited interchange of contrasting oranges and greens, meticulously layered from the scarves, to the ao dais, to the jewels, epitomizes Mai Thu’s quintessential use of chromatism during this time. A highly rare and fresh to market composition, Coquetterie hails from an important series of works inspired by canonical vignettes of art history housed in the Louvre museum.
《 調戲》是越南藝術大師梅忠恕的絹本畫作品，極為罕見，藝術價值極高。畫中兩位年輕女子互相欣賞著對方的項鍊，構圖無疑是重現了1594年楓丹白露畫派（Fontainebleau school）的經典之作《加布莉埃爾•德斯特蕾與姐妹維拉公爵夫人》。這幅經典作品描繪法國國王亨利四世（1553 - 1610）最愛的情人加布莉埃爾•德斯特蕾和她的其中一位姊妹。這位姐妹捏著加布莉埃爾的動作，被視為是象徵加布莉埃爾期後為亨利四世懷上私生子的事情。梅忠恕在二十世紀中期的巴黎雖也接觸過當時藝術家所呈現的更明目張膽的肉慾，但他仍維持較保守的態度，只是遙指那幅意大利文藝復興作品裡暗示的禁忌之愛。《 調戲 》恰如其名地描繪從偷窺角度所見的一幕，因為畫中的女子們正坐在閨閣之中。雖然如此，梅忠恕畫中的主角卻沒有像那對祼體的姊妹一般毫無掩蓋地正對著觀眾，她們身穿明亮的越南奧黛（ao dais），以更低調的姿態互相調戲。那一幅楓丹白露畫派的作品，採用了錯視畫法（trompe-l'oeil technique），展現影像與現實之間的界線，梅忠恕亦同樣靈巧地把玩著強迫透視法——他加入藍色窗簾作為畫面邊框，並在窗簾上放置一條紅色的橫幅裝飾。梅忠恕在木椅上加上掛著的圖案絲巾，對應那幅楓丹白露畫派作品中浴缸上掛著的布料。 本作出自1966年，這個時期的梅忠恕作品獲譽甚多，作品多採用活潑的實色，本作就是其中一幅代表作。絲巾、越南奧黛和珠寶上反覆採用對比鮮明的橙色與綠色，形成了一種充滿生命力的色彩碰撞，體現了梅忠恕在這時期的典型色彩風格。《 調戲 》出自梅忠恕一個重要的作品系列，而該系列的靈感皆來自羅浮宮收藏的藝術史經典作品，它在市場上極其罕見，絕跡多年後如今上拍，可謂彌足珍貴 |