Painters In Paradise - Visions of French Indochina
23 April 2026 at 09:30:00
Moor Park Mansion, Rickmansworth
Booking closes
16 April 2026
Woman with Lilies - detail, by Tô Ngoc Vân © Denise Heywood
BOOKING FOR THIS EVENT WILL OPEN IN FEBRUARY 2026
Old Saigon, elegant Hanoi, mystical Ha Long Bay - these places captivated French artists of the 19th century colonial regime in Vietnam, where they taught painting at the School of Fine Arts. Their sensual portraits and exotic landscapes evoked an idyllic world of gracious people with rich artistic traditions harking back to ancient civilisations.
Imbuing their students with Western ideas, artists such as Alix Aymé, who revived lustrous lacquer work and silk painting, and Victor Tardieu, a pupil of Matisse, formed a generation of Vietnamese painters whose creative expression fused Eastern imagery with Paris Modernism.
This Discovery Day shows the historic background of Indochina, of ancient Hindu temples, Buddhist pagodas and Chinese style palaces, that was transformed by the addition of French architecture and culture. A new aesthetic emerged, depicted by French artists as paradisical and romantic, reflecting an era and a way of life that would vanish with war.
Our Speaker
Denise Heywood
Denise Heywood
Denise Heywood is an art historian, author, lecturer, photographer and journalist. She worked in Cambodia in the 1990s and has been a scholar of Southeast Asian art ever since.
Her books include one on the Buddhist temples of Laos, Ancient Luang Prabang and Laos, also in French, and Cambodian Dance Celebration of the Gods, with a foreword by the daughter of King Sihanouk.
She lectures for the Arts Society, Art Fund, the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies on their post-graduate Asian Art Course and for the V&A; also for organisations such as Madingley Hall (University of Cambridge), the British Museum, the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, Asia House, the National Trust, the Royal Geographical Society and she has lectured worldwide for universities, museums, colleges, art institutions, literary societies and travel organisations.
Denise also writes for art, literary and travel publications and has appeared on television and radio. She has led cultural tours to Southeast Asia and France for the Royal Academy, the Art Fund, Asia House and others and also lectures on cruise ships.