Woman in Teal Ao Dai Exiting a Horse-Drawn Carriage — Print & Oil Painting

The picture catches a step. Her weight has already gone forward onto the leading foot, flat on the paving in a slim sandal, while the other is still under the dress and the near hand is closed around an upright of the carriage for balance. Nothing else in the image is moving at all.

She wears a teal blue ao dai over wide white trousers, the blue printed with faint tonal roundels that show only where the light turns, and a short string of pearls at the throat. Her hair is drawn back smoothly and the head is bowed, the eyes down, watching the ground she is stepping onto rather than the viewer.

In the other hand she carries a lidded woven basket on a rope handle, held out and away from the body so that it swings clear of the wheel. It has been painted with real attention: the weave runs in visible courses, the rim is bound, and the whole object is the warmest thing in a cool picture.

The carriage is drawn with the same patience. A shallow curved roof on turned posts, a slatted rear panel, a bench with a worn cushion, iron steps, and a tall wheel at the right built from a dark rim studded with round bolt heads. A pale horse stands in the shafts at the left, given only as legs and a flank beneath the body of the vehicle.

A second passenger is still inside, seen in shadow under a dark conical hat with a striped garment across the knees. Behind everything a bank of green hedge and trees closes the top of the canvas, and the paving underfoot runs away in a herringbone of grey blocks. Part of our Vietnam collection, near a family group in pastel ao dai walking together with a child and a vintage street scene of a silk merchant and customer.