Flower Sellers Beside a Canal Lined with Autumn Roofs — Print & Oil Painting

The sky and the water are the same colour, and that decision holds the picture together. A cool blue grey fills the top of the canvas and returns across the lower half as the canal, mottled and streaked in both places, so the hot band running through the middle appears to float between two identical greys.

That band is made of blossom and roof. Three great trees stand along the top with canopies built from hundreds of separate knife dabs in orange, tangerine and chrome yellow, dense at the centre and thinning to single flecks at the edges, and beneath them a row of houses runs along the far bank with roofs laid in the same hot colours in broad flat pulls.

The reflection is where the two systems meet. Everything warm above is dragged down into the canal as long broken verticals, and because the water is grey the oranges lose strength as they descend, ending in a dull rust near the bottom edge. A small dark boat sits out on the surface at the middle left.

Three figures occupy the lower left corner. One stands in a white ao dai and pale conical hat, seen from behind; a smaller one in blue stands beside her; a third crouches to their right over a wide basket heaped with orange and yellow blooms. They are the only cool white in a canvas otherwise divided between grey and fire.

At the lower right a raft of green lily pads carries three pink blossoms, painted with a lighter touch than anything else present. Part of our Vietnam collection, alongside boats gathered beneath colourful roofs on a golden canal and a golden autumn tree over a village lake.