Woman Bowing Low in a Misty Lotus Haze — Print & Oil Painting

The body has been reduced to one folded shape. She is bent forward at the waist to something close to a right angle, head down and turned a little toward us, arms crossed and held against the chest, feet bare and set together. Above the hip the figure runs horizontally, below it runs vertically, and the whole picture is that single hinge.

Her skirt is the largest and heaviest shape on the canvas: a long brown grey column falling from the waist to the ankles without a fold, a seam or a highlight anywhere in it. It works as the counterweight that keeps the bent upper body from tipping the design over.

Above the waist there is a pale cream sleeveless top, bare shoulders and arms, and hair drawn up into a small knot at the nape with a pink tie. The face is given almost nothing: a lowered eye, the curve of a cheek, a shadowed jaw. It is turned toward us and it still tells us nothing.

No brushwork is visible anywhere in the picture. Every edge is softened into its surroundings, the modelling is a slow airless gradient, and the ground is a pale wash of cream, grey and sage with no horizon and no floor line to stand on.

Behind her, lotus leaves and buds are indicated in translucent grey green, closer to a watermark than to plants. Saturation measures very low against a high brightness, which the near absence of any strong colour explains. It belongs to our Vietnam collection, near a woman in white ao dai sitting barefoot on a misty lotus dock and a woman in sage ao dai combing her hair by a lotus pond.