Mai Trung Thu (Vietnamese-French, 1906–1980), Arhat, After Chen Zi (Xiaolian), 1929
Ink on silk, signed and dated “MAI-TRUMG-THU 1929” along the right edge, with the Chinese character “栨” written in cinnabar red.
Image size, sight: 9 1/4 × 7 1/4 inches
Frame size: 13 3/8 × 11 1/4 inches
Executed in 1929, while Mai Trung Thu was still a student in the inaugural class of the École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine in Hanoi, this exceptional ink painting constitutes an extraordinarily early record of the artist’s engagement with classical Chinese figure painting. Mai entered the school in 1925 and graduated in 1930; he was therefore only twenty-two or twenty-three years old when he created this work.
The composition closely follows an image of an arhat by Chen Zi (1634–1711), known by his sobriquet Xiaolian, the son and artistic heir of the great late-Ming figure painter Chen Hongshou (1598–1652). A related work by Chen Zi is preserved in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (leaves a–d by Chen Hongshou - Figures, flowers, and landscapes - China - Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties - The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Trained by his father, Chen Zi perpetuated the deliberately archaic, elongated, and highly linear manner that made the Chen family’s figure paintings immediately recognizable.
Mai retains the distinctive physiognomy, seated posture, cascading robes, ritual fan, and rocky platform of his Chinese model. Yet this is far more than a mechanical copy. Through disciplined selection and transformation, the young artist converts the earlier composition into an independent meditation on the expressive possibilities of line.
Most strikingly, Mai eliminates much of the ink wash employed in the Chinese prototype to create volume and shadow. In its place, he relies almost entirely upon the traditional Chinese technique of baimiao—figure painting articulated through pure ink outline. The treatment recalls the ancient “high antiquity gossamer-line drawing” traditionally associated with Gu Kaizhi: meticulously controlled, taut, continuous, and seemingly as fine as silk spun by a spring silkworm.
The arhat’s robes are constructed from an astonishing variety of strokes. Although the lines move with great speed and assurance, virtually no two are identical. Their thickness, pressure, darkness, rhythm, and curvature continuously change according to the forms they describe. Some turn gently around the shoulders and arms; others gather into dense, rhythmic folds across the torso and lap. Every stroke performs a distinct structural function while remaining part of an uninterrupted visual current. The result possesses the natural fluency traditionally compared in Chinese criticism to “spring clouds floating through the open sky and flowing water coursing over the earth.”
This refined and inwardly controlled use of line belongs to the tradition of literati painting. It is precise without being rigid, disciplined without becoming mechanical, and elegant without sacrificing spiritual intensity. The arhat’s solemn face, lowered gaze, and monumental stillness emerge not through Western modeling, but through the concentrated psychological force of contour alone.
Mai deliberately adopts a markedly different brush language for the rocky platform. Here the strokes become broader, rougher, darker, and more forcefully varied in speed and pressure. Dry, broken textures alternate with saturated accents, creating an emphatic material weight beneath the ethereal linearity of the figure. This vigorous handling reflects the epigraphic or “metal-and-stone” aesthetic of jinshi painting, in which brushwork derives its expressive authority from the archaic forms of bronze inscriptions and stone carving.
The contrast is intentional and highly sophisticated: the finely sustained, gossamer-like lines of the arhat are set against the abrasive, weighty brushwork of the rock. The elevated refinement of literati figure painting and the rugged monumentality of the jinshi tradition are thus brought together within a single small composition. Such complete command of two contrasting modes of brushwork is remarkable in any artist—and particularly difficult to imagine in a painter only twenty-two or twenty-three years old.
The work also illuminates the deeper genealogy of Mai Trung Thu’s mature art. The elegant contours that would later define his celebrated silk paintings of women, children, musicians, and intimate scenes of Vietnamese life did not arise solely from modern academic training or from the technical properties of silk. Their foundations can already be traced here to Mai’s close study of the great Chinese lineage of figure painting: Gu Kaizhi’s continuous gossamer line, Li Gonglin’s baimiao discipline, and the archaizing figure styles transmitted through Chen Hongshou and his son Chen Zi.
The inscription is itself significant. Rather than signing with Chinese calligraphy, Mai wrote “MAI-TRUMG-THU 1929” in Roman letters along the right side of the silk, followed by the character “栨” in cinnabar red. The latter is the final character of his Chinese name, 枚中栨, and functions as an intimate, hand-rendered personal mark rather than a conventionally carved and impressed seal. The combination of a Roman-letter signature, Western calendar date, Chinese character, Vietnamese identity, and classical Chinese subject encapsulates the intercultural environment in which modern Vietnamese art was taking form.
Created one year before Mai’s graduation and nearly a decade before his permanent settlement in France, Arhat may represent one of the earliest presently known works to document his direct and profound study of Chinese art. It demonstrates that the celebrated linear language of his mature silk paintings was already being formulated in Hanoi in 1929 through an intense dialogue with Chinese pictorial antiquity.
At once an academic study, a work of spiritual portraiture, and an independent display of extraordinary technical confidence, Arhat occupies a potentially pivotal place in the understanding of Mai Trung Thu’s early development. Its remarkable preservation on silk further enhances the importance of this rare and revelatory work.
Provenance: Acquired from a distinguished collector in Silicon Valley. 来源：得自加州硅谷资深收藏家。
For condition report and additional photos, please contact the Asian Art Department.
