Woman in Sage Ao Dai Combing Her Hair by a Lotus Pond — Print & Oil Painting

The hair is the subject and it has been given more of the canvas than the face. It falls from the crown forward over the near shoulder in one unbroken black mass, as wide as her torso and reaching past the waist, and it is painted almost without highlight, so it reads as a flat shape cut out of the picture rather than as strands.

Against that black, one small object carries all the colour. She holds a comb in the lower hand, lacquer red and no longer than a finger, drawn through the hair at about the level of her hip, and its warmth is the only strong hue in a painting otherwise built from green, olive and cream.

Her other hand is raised behind the head with the fingers spread into the hair at the nape, so both arms frame the face and the head is bowed between them, the eyes lowered and almost closed. The gesture is unhurried and entirely private.

The finish is smooth and airless. The sage green ao dai is modelled in gentle tonal shifts with no visible brushwork anywhere, the white trousers below it are almost matte, and she sits on a low pale ledge that crosses the right of the canvas as a plain grey band.

Behind her the lotus pond is handled with the same evenness: broad flat pads seen edge on and face on, two pale pink blossoms placed high at the left and the right, thin stems rising out of dull green water. At the lower right a loose bundle of cut stems and small dark objects lies on the ground. Part of our Vietnam collection, alongside an ao dai woman among autumn lotus leaves and a dragonfly and a wide lotus lake beneath a golden horizon.