Woman in Lavender Ao Dai Asleep Beside a Vase of Pink Lotus — Print & Oil Painting

The background is the strangest thing here. A deep green field fills the upper half and it has been covered in large scrolling ornament: curling fronds and volutes in a lighter green, arranged symmetrically and repeating, closer to carved panelling or a damask hanging than to any kind of space. Nothing in it recedes.

The floor answers with a second pattern. It is a dark teal surface carrying a paler border of small repeated motifs along the bottom edge, laid out flat with no perspective at all, so the sleeping figure lies between two decorated planes rather than in a room.

She is on her side with the knees drawn up, one arm folded beneath her and the other lying along the hip with the hand loosely closed. Her ao dai is a pale lavender white with cool blue shadows, painted with a high smooth polish, and it spreads out behind her across the floor in a long fan of cloth.

Her head rests against the shoulder of a large jar. The face is tilted up slightly, the eyes closed, the mouth small and red, and a pale flower is pinned at the temple where the dark hair is drawn back. Down the side of the jar runs a broad flare of orange and rust glaze, and that flare is the only warm mass in the entire picture.

Out of the jar the lotus rise in a wide spray: two open pink blossoms, a cream white one, a red one out at the right, several closed buds and a green pad on a tall stem, every one of them given the same glossy finish as the figure. Part of our Vietnam collection, near a woman in blue ao dai resting against a vase of lotus flowers and a woman resting in a hammock with her conical hat.