View Of The Cave, Along Bay - Mai Thu - Signed Oil On Canvas - Vietnam - Indochina - Halong

M. Thu - View of the cave - Oil on canvas - Signed
Many questions still remain unanswered around this painter. We have been following him closely for almost fourteen years now, exactly since 2011 when we acquired from an auction house that has made Vietnamese artists one of its specialties a painting signed M.Thu, then attributed to Mai Trung Thu in his youth before his departure for France in 1943. This attribution being challenged by his family, a new attribution to a certain Nguyen Mai Thu, an attribution very questionable, for not to say fanciful because no one knows the slightest biographical element of this character and the signature of his paintings has never included the surname Nguyen or the initial N. This name of Nguyen Mai Thu appeared from who knows where for the first time on sale in 2017 and can now be easily picked up with each appearance of a new painting bearing this signature. In any case, the very European style of these paintings suggests that he was formed through contact with French teachers, probably within the Hanoi School of Fine Arts,given the location of his landscapes. His production, involving only oils on canvas, is mostly located in Tonkin and sometimes dated between 1933 and 1950. Other purchases followed in different auction rooms in Paris or in the provinces, with sometimes eccentric attributions such as “unidentified Thai signature”.
We now know that his name is indeed Mai Thu and that he signed in turn "THU", "mai thu", in Chinese characters whose pinyin transcription is Méi Qiū (photo attached) and especially "M.Thu ".