Trần Quang Trân

Biography

The lacquer painting “The Sparkling Water Pond” is considered the first made in Indochina. It belonged to the collection of the fine arts school in Hanoi and disappeared, probably at the beginning of the war of independence: it was either destroyed or stolen. It seems to have influenced Nguyễn Gia Trí, later a recognised master of Vietnamese lacquer.

The painter was born in 1900 in the Hanoi region.

He did not become an artist at once. He first studied trade and worked for an oil company in Haiphong, then at a lamp factory in Đáp Cầu. He entered the fine arts school in Hanoi, founded in 1925, only in 1927 and studied there until 1932; he belonged to the third graduating class of the painting section. He stood out for the care of his work and of the drawings he made under the artist Đinh Văn Thành. It was a teacher, Joseph Inguimberty, who interested him in lacquer. In 1931, for the Colonial Exhibition in Paris, his work was included in a publication of the best student work from the three main art schools of Indochina. He is credited with a technique in which gold powder is placed between layers of lacquer, giving an effect of light and shadow. It was later used by Phạm Hậu, Trần Văn Cẩn, Nguyễn Khang and Nguyễn Gia Trí. Whether he went to Japan in the 1930s to improve his skills is not known for certain; such a trip is possible.

After graduating in 1932 he opened a studio at 87 Charron Street in Hanoi (now Mai Hắc Đế Street). There in the 1930s he made lacquer panels and boxes, as well as portraits of well-known Vietnamese; among them is named a portrait of the poet Tú Mỡ, known for his satire of the French administration. On Tố Tịch Street he also had a workshop where furniture was made and restored. He illustrated newspapers and magazines, among them Bắc Kỳ Thể thao, Đông Tây and Tiểu thuyết Thứ Bảy. In 1938 he made a series of woodcuts for the book “Tales and Legends of the Land of Annam”, printed in Nam Định, and illustrated the play “Eternal Regrets”.

Around the middle of the 1930s he changed his artistic name and began to sign his work Ngym, and later Nghi Am.

His paintings show deserted streets, temples, old buildings and lakes. European technique is joined in them to an Eastern way of looking, and the impression left on the viewer is one of calm.

In the early 1940s he began teaching painting at the private schools of Thăng Long and Gia Long, and from 1949 at the art school, now the Vietnam University of Fine Arts. During the war he remained in the north of the country. From 1958 to 1962 he worked at the Vietnam Film Studio (animation) and gave lectures at a film school.

His surviving output is small: oil paintings, watercolours, and drawings in ink wash and charcoal. Of the lacquer works that made him known, apparently not one remains. He painted until his last years and died in 1969.