*PHAM HAU (1903-1995) Vertical red lacquer panel with polychrome decoration in shades of fawn and brown, with eggshell highlights, depicting sailfish moving among aquatic plants and corals, attached to rocks. Signed in Chinese, lower right, above a stylised stamp. Vietnam, 20th century. A VERTICAL LACQUERED PANEL WITH SAIL FISHES, SIGNED PHAM HAU, VIETNAM, 20TH CENTURY. DIM. 135 X 90 CM (53 1/8 X 35 7/16 IN.) PROVENANCE Acquired in Indochina by a relative of the current owner who was then working in the Indochinese railway industry. NOTE Pham Hau was a Vietnamese artist and master lacquerer who trained at the École des Beaux-Arts de l'Indochine in Hanoi, like some of his lacquerer and painter contemporaries, such as Gia Tri, Le Quoc Loc, Le Pho and Maithu, with whom he worked and who, like him, went on to become famous. Born in 1903 into a poor family in the village of Dông Ngac, Ha Dong province, and orphaned at the age of 10, it was through his marriage to a young girl from a wealthy family that he met the artist Nguyen Nam Son, who in 1925 co-founded the École des Beaux-Arts with the Frenchman Victor Tardieu. He joined the fifth year of the school, from 1929 to 1934, where he studied the technique and art of lacquerware with Joseph Inguimberty, a course created in 1928. Inguimberty encouraged the students to go beyond the limits of what had hitherto been a local craft with an ancient tradition, and turn it into a modern artistic expression in its own right, at the junction of two cultures, Asian and Western. Indeed, the pictorial and decorative possibilities of this subtle and difficult material, often illuminated by eggshell inlays, seduced Pham Hau, who brought them to their apogee in a whole series of works, panels, furniture and other lacquered objects that made him internationally famous. The creation in 1949 of his National School of Handicrafts, the country's first university of applied art, still active today under the name of "University of Industrial Fine Art", demonstrates his involvement in the development and transmission of his knowledge. The panel presented here draws on the artist's favourite themes. Veiled fish are frequently depicted, symbolising happiness and prosperity, but also, in Buddhism, the freedom of spirit of those who reach enlightenment.