Two Women Carrying Flower Baskets Across an Open Field — Print & Oil Painting

There is no horizon in this painting. A single flat blue fills the upper three quarters, graded very slightly from deeper at the top to paler at the middle, and it never declares whether it is sky, sea or lake. The ground arrives only in the last quarter, as a band of olive and brown flecked with tiny pink.

Against that blue two figures walk away from us, and the design depends on their being unlike. The left one is in a pale grey white ao dai under a white conical hat; the right one is in a strong rose pink under a pink hat. Each has a single heavy black plait falling to the waist.

The shoulder pole is the only straight line in the picture. It lies across the left woman's shoulders, tilted slightly off level, and from each end a set of cords drops to a shallow round basket heaped with pink lotus blooms and broad green leaves. Both her arms are up along the pole, steadying it.

The woman in pink carries differently: one basket only, held down at arm's length in the right hand, packed with pale blossom and dark foliage. Setting the two methods side by side is what the picture is really about, and the pink dress makes sure the comparison is noticed.

The paint is dry and slightly chalky, the blue laid in fine directional strokes and the baskets built from small stiff dabs. Two faint dark reflections run down from the feet into the wet ground. It belongs to our Vietnam collection, alongside a flower seller carrying baskets on a shoulder pole and three women in pale blue ao dai carrying flower baskets.