SINGAPORE – A rare, six-panelled lacquer screen from the last Vietnamese Emperor Bao Dai is in Singapore for a brief sojourn before going under the hammer in Hong Kong at the end of the month.
Golden Sunset Over Halong Bay, the work of lacquer master Pham Hau, was granted to the late American journalist Edgar Ansel Mowrer when he met the emperor in 1951.
Mowrer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, took it back to his family’s home in New Hampshire. It was passed down to its present owner, Mowrer’s granddaughter.
The lacquer painting and a calling card from Emperor Bao will carry an estimated value of HK$2.8 to 3.8 million (S$490,000 to S$660,000) at the Bonhams Hong Kong Southeast Asian Modern and Contemporary Art sale on Nov 27.
The public here canview the work at ArtSpace@Helutrans in Tanjong Pagar Distripark from Friday (Nov 5) to Sunday, as part of an auction preview that also features works by Singapore artists Fan Chang Tien, Lim Tze Peng and Cheong Soo Pieng.
At 1m tall and nearly 2m wide, Golden Sunset Over Halong Bay offers a panoramic view of the bay, with intricate etchings of fishermen and fishing boats between islands of limestone.
It was created some time between 1938 and 1945 – at the height of the artist’s career – and makes use of costly materials such as gold and cinnabar.
Ms Bernadette Rankine, director of Bonhams Southeast Asia, calls the work a masterpiece – one “painted with pride, and feeling for his homeland and people”.
“Our opinion is that Halong Bay is painted and worked on by the hand of Pham Hau himself and not a workshop piece, where subjects would be stylised and traced from a cartoon.”
She says that according to his son, the artist did very few works of Halong Bay, a Unesco World Heritage site and a popular tourist destination.
This is the second one known to date, on a much larger scale and made with “richer material” and much more intricate than the other one, Ms Rankine adds. It also has a strong sense of place, unlike the majority of the artist’s works, which were “landscapes that give a sense of a generic location in Vietnam”.
In recent years, the auction house has seen more collectors from the region who are proud of their national artists and want to buy their works back.
“The Vietnamese have been very active in buying works from their artists – works that went overseas during the colonial era. That’s not to say that there was any looting or plunder here. Simply that expats were buying art during their stint overseas and taking it home with them at the end of their term.
“These pieces are now coming up for auction and are being repatriated,” Ms Rankine says, citing Golden Sunset Over Halong Bay and Mai Trung Thu’s Lady Playing A Nguyet Cam, which is also up for auction in Hong Kong, as examples.
She hopes this trend will play out in other South-east Asian countries including Singapore.
“Singaporeans have had a strong tradition of patronising well-known artists such as Chen Wen Hsi and Cheong Soo Pieng, but there are many more deserving artists such as Fan Chang Tien and Chong Fah Cheong who are also well worth the attention of collectors,” she says.
“It’s an exciting area for Bonhams specialists as we seek to locate these works – many of which are now family heirlooms in Europe or North America with new owners who have no real clue about the history and value of these pieces.”
Bonhams has been achieving prices almost 30 per cent higher than before Covid-19.
Ms Rankine says this is partly due to the auction house’s investment in technology, such as its app which launched last November. This year, about half of the winning bids at auctions came from people bidding online.
People also have a “pent-up desire” to spend as they have more spare cash, she adds.
“Nobody is travelling, nobody is spending on holidays, so we are really seeing the benefits of it.”
For more information, go to Bonhams’ website.
