Luong Xuan Nhi

Luong Xuan Nhi was born in Hanoi. Most art-market sources give his birth year as 1914, and one detailed biography (Hanoi Art Tours) gives the specific date of April 10, 1914; a Sotheby's catalogue entry instead lists 1913, so the exact year carries a small documented discrepancy. He trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de l'Indochine in Hanoi from 1932 to 1937, studying under painters including Nguyen Do Cung, Luu Van Sin, and Hoang Lap Ngon, and graduated in 1937. Most sources place him in the school's seventh class or session, though one art-historical account describes it as the eighth; his graduation year of 1937 is consistent across sources. As a student he won a silver medal in 1935 and a gold medal in 1936 from the Societe des Artistes Decorateurs de l'Indochine, followed by that society's top honor award in 1937.

In 1943 he was a founding member of FARTA (Foyer de l'Art Annamite), which organized salons in Hanoi in 1943 and 1944. After 1954, with the return of peace in North Vietnam, he taught at what is now the Vietnam University of Fine Arts from 1955 to 1981, and later received the government title of People's Teacher, in 1990, and Vietnam's State Prize for Art and Literature, in 2001. He was also recognized as a senior member of the National Committee for Vietnamese Literature and Arts in 1996 and 1998.

Luong Xuan Nhi died in 2006. Multiple sources, including Hanoi Art Tours, Christie's, and AskART, agree on the year, but none of the sources reviewed here specify the exact date or place of his death.

Luong Xuan Nhi is discussed in Vietnamese and French-language art history primarily as part of the founding cohort of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de l'Indochine, credited with bringing a Western academic training to Vietnamese subject matter. He is informally described in market and biographical sources as a painter of tender depictions of young women, market scenes, and rural landscapes. No verbatim, attributable critical assessment from a named critic at a major outlet could be confirmed in the sources reviewed for this profile, so none is quoted here; his reputation rests instead on his teaching legacy, his role in the FARTA salons of the 1940s, and the steady institutional and market interest in the Hanoi school generation to which he belonged.

Luong Xuan Nhi's auction market centers on Vietnamese and French colonial-era paintings sold mainly through European and Asian houses. His documented auction high is Le Tricot (The Knitting), an ink and color work on silk that sold for EUR 756,440 (about USD 875,728) at Aguttes in Neuilly-sur-Seine on September 30, 2021, a result reported by Gazette Drouot as a world record for the artist. A market-analysis source (Aucties) separately cites a EUR 590,000 result for the same 1941 ink-on-silk Knitting, which appears to be an earlier or hammer-price report of that same 2021 sale rather than a distinct transaction. A different, later work, a 1939 Portrait de dame, sold for USD 227,100 at Christie's Hong Kong on March 28, 2026, well below the 2021 record. The market includes lots catalogued under both name orders, Luong Xuan Nhi and Xuan Nhi Luong, which collectors and researchers should treat as the same artist when tracing provenance and comparable sales.

There is no catalogue raisonne for Luong Xuan Nhi, and no current gallery or estate representation could be confirmed from available sources, so buyers should expect to rely on auction house specialist review and documented provenance rather than a dealer or foundation verification channel. His auction record is thin: the confirmed top sales are concentrated in a small number of lots dated between 2021 and 2026, headlined by the 2021 Aguttes result, so any single sale should be read in the context of a limited public sales history rather than as part of a dense, continuous price series. Because his works are catalogued under two name orders, Luong Xuan Nhi and Xuan Nhi Luong, collectors researching comparables should search both forms.