Born in Marseille in 1896, Joseph Inguimberty entered the Marseille School of Fine Arts in 1910, then the National School of Arts Decoratifs in Paris in 1913. He traveled to the Netherlands and Belgium in the early 1920s and began painting scenes of the working world. In 1925, he was recruited by Victor Tardieu and Nam Sơn to teach courses of Decorative Arts at the Indochina Fine Arts College.
Joseph Inguimberty, amazed by the effect of light reflecting on various lacquer objects in temples, had a revelation and decided to include lacquer in the school’s curriculum. He later ran a lacquer workshop, founded with the help of his colleague, Professor Alix Aymé in 1934. A prolific artist, Joseph Inguimberty also distinguished himself for his oil paintings and his depictions of Việt Nam. Women in áo dài in lush nature, farmers in rice fields in the early morning light, local life – which quickly became a favourite subject of the artist – were depicted with striking beauty.
After Việt Nam declared independence in 1945, Inguimberty was forced to leave Việt Nam for the South of France, where he lived until his death in 1971.
In his work, Inguimberty chose to capture a precise moment of rural life that he enjoyed watching. A woman, tanned from long days of work in the rice fields, carries her burden of crops at the end of the day. The weight and hardship of her work is evident in the lines of her face. Surrounded by rice fields, the woman stands at the center of the painting with her strength and power, Inguimberty has portrayed the courage of Vietnamese women.
JOSEPH INGUIMBERTY (1896-1971)
“A woman on the rice field”, 1928
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated in the lower right corner
110 × 120 cm
Provenance: Private collection, France, passed through generations.
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