Artist Van Binh is one of the artists with continuous, persistent and diverse creativity. His creative legacy is probably in the thousands for all materials. But in oil, the number only stops at a few dozen. Large scale oil paintings are even rarer. The painting “Landscape of Hung Temple”, 75×100 cm, is probably one of his biggest oil paintings to date (that Viet Art View know).
The painting ‘Season of lotus at Khiem Lang’ is one of his few rare large scale oil paintings. The dimension of the painting is 58×100 cm. There is no year of creation on the surface. But (remembered by the family) in the certificate from the artist’s family, the year of creation was stated in 1971. In addition, he also had a sketch (for the oil painting) in gouache.
In the book “Vietnamese painting – a different face”, (2015, World Publishing House) by Art critic Phan Cam Thuong wrote: “After the success of the August Revolution, Nguyen Van Binh worked at Trang Tien Information House, then followed the resistance to work for newspaper National Salvation, Zone 4 (1947-1950), and then worked at Interzone 4 painting studio.”
Thus, the gouache painting (above) depicting the lotus season at Khiem Lang could have been drawn by him in a direct way in the years 1947-1950 while working in Interzone 4. Then, on the basis of the direct painting, in 1971, he created an oil painting “Season of lotus at Khiem Lang”.
