He suggested that the artist Marius Reynaud (1860-1935) come twice a week to give the prince lessons. A French Captain de Vialar, in charge of his supervision, discovered the prince’s drawings one day. He learned photography, studied literature and began drawing. But he was given a pension from the general budget of Indochina and was able to create a home in his villa.ĭuring this time in Algeria he learned to speak French and also, apparently, to ride a bicycle – unusual at the time. His mail was monitored and all communication with Indochina was prohibited. Still only a teenager, he led a simple life, but was placed under guard and constant surveillance that would last his whole life. He was installed in a villa on the heights above the city in El Biar, just outside Algiers, where he would eventually have a neo-Moorish house built, which became known as La Residence Gia Long (after the first of the Nguyen emperors). The young Hàm Nghi landed in Algiers on 13 January, 1889, weakened by malaria during the long sea voyage. Replaced on the throne by his brother Dong Khanh, Hàm Nghi would spend 55 years in exile, The prince, effectively a pawn on the complex political chessboard of French Indochina, as the French considered him as leader of anti-colonial resistance and a political threat, was sent into exile to Algeria, a French colony, in December 1888. However, in 1885, following the failure of an insurrection, the Can Vuong, ‘Save The King,’ against General Herni de Courcy, Protector of Annam, and French colonial rule, Emperor Hàm Nghi was captured. The French had already colonised the south, Cochin-China, and Cambodia, and were expanding into Annam and Tonkin and a treaty of protectorate was signed in Hué in August 1883. The court was politically divided between those supporting a French presence and those resisting it. His uncle, Emperor Tu Duc (1829-1883), having no heirs, had adopted several successors, of whom two were older brothers of Hàm Nghi. He ascended the throne on 2 August 1884, but he reigned for only one year, until 1885. Hàm Nghi (1871-1943), Prince of Annam, was born Phuc Ung Lich in August 1871 in Hué, into the artistic milieu at the royal palace, part of the imperial city built by the Nguyen emperors on the evocatively named Perfume River. The Nguyen capital at Hué was a highly cultured place of rich artistic and Confucian traditions, including painting, calligraphy, lacquerware, silk painting, sculpture, music, dance, opera, poetry, ceramics, wood carving, embroidery and silk weaving, among many others, which the French admired and maintained. They built elegant cities such as Hanoi and Phnom Penh which were modelled on Baron Haussman’s Paris and each was referred to as the Paris of Asia. While the French exploited the region’s many resources they also actively encouraged the arts in many different forms, including the restoration of the temples of Angkor in Cambodia and Champa in Vietnam and the creation of art schools. During the French colonial regime of 1887-1954, these three states, together with Cambodia and Laos, were united to form The Indochinese Union, with its capital in Hanoi, a federation that would end in 1954. At this time, Vietnam, not yet a unified country, consisted of Tonkin in the north, Annam in the centre and Cochin-China in the south. Hàm Nghi was the Eighth Emperor of the Ngyun DynastyĬrowned at the age of just 13 years old, Hàm Nghi was the eighth of 13 emperors of the Nguyen dynasty that ruled in Hué, Annam, from 1802-1945. It recounts a poignant story of a patriotic painter and sculptor who sought refuge in his art and consecrated his life to it. It draws on the work of the emperor’s great-great-grand-daughter Amandine Dabat, curator of the exhibition and author of a doctoral thesis published in 2019, concerning the life and artistic output of Hàm Nghi. The exhibition of brings together, for the first time, more than 150 works of art, objects, letters and documents from private collections and Parisian museums, that reveal a chapter of history and of history of art hitherto unknown to the French public. L’Art en Exil, an exhibition at the Musée Des Arts Asiatiques in Nice, focuses on the work of a 19th-century prince who was banished from his homeland of Vietnam and sent into exile in Algeria. Misty landscapes at twilight in gentle colours of purple, violet, lavender, grey, blue and gold, characterise the paintings of Hàm Nghi, former emperor of Vietnam.
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