Vietnamese Modernism from Le Pho to Le Nang Hien: What Collectors Pay, and One Silk Painting for Sale

On 28 September 2026 Sotheby’s Hong Kong sold a 1939 silk by Vu Cao Dam for US$3.69 million. Three weeks later a 1957 oil by the same artist, Mother and Child, opened in our timed sale at 10,000 €, estimate 15,000–20,000 €, closing on Saturday 31 October. Meanwhile an ink-on-silk painting by a Hanoi painter who never attended the school that trained Vu Cao Dam and Le Pho, Le Nang Hien‘s Young Woman Sewing with a Cat of 1980, is in our gallery at 4,500 €. Those three prices are the Vietnamese modern market in one line: a record at the top, a serious oil in the middle, and a silk painting by a documented name at the price of a good print. This article explains the ladder.

One school, three generations of prices

Almost everything called Vietnamese modernism comes out of one building: the École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine, opened in Hanoi in 1925 by the French painter Victor Tardieu. Its students learned oil painting and perspective from Paris and were pushed to apply them to silk, lacquer and Vietnamese subjects. The first classes produced Le Pho (1907–2001), Vu Cao Dam (1908–2000), Mai Trung Thu and Le Thi Luu (1911–1988), the school’s first woman graduate. All four moved to France between 1931 and 1940 and spent the rest of their lives there, which is why their work is in French collections and why Paris, not Hanoi, is where it comes to auction.

Their prices rose through the 2010s on Hong Kong demand and have not stopped. Vu Cao Dam’s 1944 silk Maternité made €528,560 at Aguttes in May 2024; his oils of the 1950s have made €220,520 twice at the same house, and later oils €61,100 and €83,200 at Millon in April 2024 (Aguttes, Millon results). The September 2026 record of US$3,691,000 for Conversation d’élégantes au jardin at Sotheby’s Hong Kong (HENI) put him in the same bracket as Le Pho. In May 2026 we sold a Vu Cao Dam oil of 1964, Maternité, 59 × 78.5 cm, for 70,000 € hammer against an estimate of 12,000–15,000 €, paid and delivered. We profiled Le Pho in Le Pho Artist: Investing in Vietnamese Modernism and Le Thi Luu in Le Thi Luu’s Silk Paintings.

Vu Cao Dam, Mother and Child (1957), at auction until 31 October

Lot 1 of our Selected Works timed sale is an oil on canvas of 1957, 60 × 80 cm, signed and dated lower left, from the years in Vence when Vu Cao Dam moved from silk to thickly worked oil and the mother-and-child became his central subject. Unlined, on its original stretcher, with no retouching under ultraviolet light; the condition report and full photographs are available on request. Bidding closes at 17:00 CET on Saturday 31 October 2026; the estimate is 15,000–20,000 €, and a 25 % buyer’s premium, VAT included, is added to the hammer price. The lot page lists the comparable results.

Le Nang Hien: the Hanoi painter outside the school

Le Nang Hien (1921–2014) is the counter-example to the Indochine school story. Born into a Confucian family in Hanoi’s Hang Buom quarter, he learned silk painting on weekly visits to the painter Tran Quang Tran’s house, taught in the 1945 literacy campaign, opened a studio at 76 Hang Dau in 1953, and spent decades as an illustrator for Hanoi papers, drawing the young women of the city who became the subject of his silks. He stayed in Vietnam all his life. In 2018 one of his silk paintings made $17,570 at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, and we told his story in Nang Hien Le: A Self-Taught Painter’s $17,570 Sotheby’s Sale.

Young Woman Sewing with a Cat is from 1980: a woman in an áo dài bent over her embroidery, a cat at her feet, drawn in fine ink line with colour washes on silk, 49 × 34.5 cm, framed to 64.7 × 49 cm, signed and stamped with the artist’s red seal at the upper right. It is the same technique, the same subject and the same decade as the silks the Paris-based painters sold through Galerie Romanet and Findlay, by a man who learned it in Hanoi. The price is 4,500 €.

Reading the price ladder

Silk by the first Indochine generation: six figures to millions, Hong Kong and Paris. Oils by the same painters from their French decades: tens of thousands to low six figures, with the mother-and-child subject at the top of the range. Silk by the Hanoi painters who stayed, with a Sotheby’s or Christie’s result behind the name: a few thousand euros. The gap between the second and third rungs is where the market has been moving for a decade, as Vietnamese collectors buy back their own painters, and it is the rung where a European buyer can still afford an original on silk.

For the gallery work, the price on the page is the price, with no buyer’s premium; Buy now reserves it for 48 hours while you pay by transfer or card, and shipping is quoted separately with an estimate on the page. For the lot, register on the site, and bid or leave a maximum on the lot page. Both are catalogued under the artist’s name without qualification and carry our five-year guarantee of authorship.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a Vu Cao Dam painting cost?

His record is US$3.69 million for a 1939 silk at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in September 2026. Oils of the 1950s have made €220,520 at Aguttes; later oils sell for €60,000–85,000 at Millon and Aguttes. Our 1957 oil, Mother and Child, is estimated at 15,000–20,000 € in the timed sale closing 31 October 2026.

What is Vietnamese silk painting?

Ink and colour washed into silk, a technique the École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine revived in the late 1920s and that Le Pho, Vu Cao Dam, Mai Trung Thu and Le Thi Luu carried to Paris. Hanoi painters such as Le Nang Hien continued it in Vietnam.

Where can I buy a Vietnamese silk painting?

Aurora & Athena currently has Le Nang Hien’s Young Woman Sewing with a Cat (1980) in the gallery at 4,500 €, and a Vu Cao Dam oil of 1957 at auction until 31 October 2026. The Paris houses Aguttes and Millon hold dedicated Vietnamese sales each spring and autumn.