Though one of Asia’s most accomplished and talented international female artists, Van Duong Thanh has lived and worked in Sweden for more than 20 years. Yet as we sat together next to a big window overlooking a busy street at a charming, newly-opened art gallery in Hanoi, she kept talking about how the treasure of Vietnamese folklore has filled her paintings, her career, and her identity.

‘I drew heavily on the experience of living in the countryside in my early years, the art of woodcarving on the wall at village temples and the richness of legends, folk tales and folk songs,’ she recalled.

Nostalgia for home often brought her back to Hanoi, a place that has remained anchored in her mind. This time, though, she was back to stage an exhibition, ‘Van Duong Thanh with a Touch of Summer’, at V-Art Room, 75 Tran Hung Dao, where for the first time she displayed her collection of eleven portraits by late painters Nguyen Tu Nghiem (1922) and Bui Xuan Phai (1920-1988).

Slowly sipping on green tea infused with lotus collected from West Lake, Thanh described her artistic journey with a charming smile.

Born in the coastal town of Tuy Hoa in Phu Yen province, Van Duong Thanh later moved to Hanoi when she was only four.

Her father, a civil servant, was inordinately proud of his daughter’s painting skill and always encouraged her to follow her dream to become an artist. Later Thanh enrolled and studied for 12 years at the l’Ecole de Beaux Arts, Indochine, where she was trained within the traditional thematic principles encompassing traditional arts under the guidance of Tran Luu Hau, Diep Minh Chau, and other renowned artists.

She probably first came to the attention of the local art community in 1974, when her ‘White Chrysanthemum’ painting was bought by the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum for 300 Vietnam dong; an enormous amount when compared with the average salary of, say, an engineer at that time.

She became friends with Bui Xuan Phai and Nguyen Tu Nghiem, who had already established their reputations as the most prolific modern painters in Vietnam and secured a range of works by these masters, summoned up into a unique collection that was treasured many years later on.

Asked to name those who had a strong impact on her artistic career, Thanh mentions notable French impressionists along with prominent Vietnamese artists.

However, she fondly remembers the respected Bui Xuan Phai. In fact, even before meeting him Thanh had admired his art since she was much younger, often saving clippings of his illustrations and sketches from Van Nghe magazine.

She became his student, his soul mate and they developed between them a bond and friendship built on their shared love of art. Many of Bui Xuan Phai’s works that originated during his 20-year encounter with Van Duong Thanh are portraits of her.

Thanh estimated there were more than 1,000 portraits drawn by the master and she still has 300 in her private collection.

These are mostly works on paper - drawings and paintings on a variety of paper media, even newspaper and pages torn out of books in which Phai has captured his model’s personality with exquisite precision.

Shireen Naziree, a Malaysian art critic, in the catalogue ‘Art Works by Bui Xuan Phai from the Collection of Van Duong Thanh’, highlighted these intimate representations of the female form by the late painter:

‘Often they encompassed simple gestures and forms and despite their visual economy, they were always appropriated with a generosity that combined an acute sense of respect and sincerity.’

Van Duong Thanh also painted and sketched Phai, in which she especially echoed his fragile manner and gentle inner eye.

In July Thanh proudly presented to Hanoi audiences seven paintings by Phai, most of which are portraits of her. An oil on canvas painting entitled Diu Dang (Gentle), dated by the master in 1974, and another oil on canvas called Van Duong Thanh Ao Do (Van Duong Thanh in Red), completed in 1975, are the two most acclaimed.

Van Duong Thanh’s body of work reveals the European influences of impressionism, expressionism, and abstract combined harmoniously with an Asian style and Vietnamese folkloric tradition.

Mining her own memories and experience, she poured on toile romantic images of the country’s landscape and people.

Many of her exhibitions feature a series about Hanoi, the constant theme that flows through the long periods she lives away from home.

One can often recognise in her lacquer and oil on canvas the contours of Quan Chuong Gate, narrow alleys, mossy roofs, dancing flowers, and the casual yet charming serenity of the Old Quarter. Everything is filled with depth and detail and an abundance of life.

As a female artist, Van Duong Thanh is also keen on observing the rituals and concerns of women around her.

The work ‘Women and Nature’ shows a mother resting on bright grass under a blue sky with rows of trees fading into distance. The painting was previously displayed at the Fine Arts Museum in Sweden in 2000 and later acquired by Australian collector John Rosten.

Nora Taylor, in a rare art book on female artists in Hanoi, called ‘Painters in Hanoi: An Ethnography of Vietnamese Art’, wrote that Van Duong Thanh’s work ‘appeals to a conventional view of Vietnam and its beautiful scenery and exotic landscape, and will continue finding a demand.’

Throughout the years, Van Duong Thanh has achieved an incredible career. She has drawn more than 1,500 paintings and held some 65 exhibitions around the world.

Her works have travelled to several international museums, including the national art museums of Singapore, Poland, Thailand and Sweden.

She seems to be devoted to art more than ever. Her studio in Hanoi, the White Lotus villa on the edge of West Lake, has been turned into an atelier that she expects will be a space for people regardless of their background to come, learn and develop their love for art, just as she was nurtured by her beloved father and outstanding teachers in the good old days.