Happy Tears

Posted on 15 July 2006 @ 00:22 in Personal

I just received an email from a total stranger which made me burst into tears, but they were happy tears.

Dear Chet

I was searching on the internet and came across your notes on HVV.

Ha Van Vuong was a lady, full name Lucierne Ha Van Vuong. She was in fact French, married to a Vietnamise Man.

We have found little info on the net about her and the only picture that ever shows up is Madoline

Hope this helps

Regards

Richard

Here’s a picture of The Mandolin (spelled Madoline in Richard’s email):

And here’s a repost of the entry that accompanied the picture:

An Artist Rediscovered

Earlier this afternoon, I sent off an email to a fine art restorer by the name of Richard Zahler. His name came up in my search for information on the artist Ha Van Vuong.

Ha Van who?

As far as I know, HVV is Vietnamese. I first discovered HVV’s paintings when a student in Norwich, England, in an Athena store which sells pretty pictures for framing, cards, etc., including reproductions of famous paintings. HVV’s work caught my eye, I bought copies of whatever was available, in both poster and smaller 10×12 sizes. I still have the posters and expect to bring them out for framing and displaying at my new apartment (which I expect to be moving into sometime in January 2006).

Years later, I searched for HVV online and some of those paintings came up. The most well-known is probably this, which has various names, including “Mandolin” and “Strumming” :

That’s one of the pictures I bought at Athena years ago. I took out my collection and saw two that have not surfaced on the Net so far:

And what brought Ha Van Vuong and his/her paintings to mind? Janis Ian. Her new web site’s logo looks quite similar to the first picture:

What do you think?

I thought maybe either Janis or Pat her partner are familiar with Ha Van Vuong’s work, so I posted a question about it on the message board and she replied that they are not.

Going back to the email I sent Mr Zahler, I hope he replies and gives more info on the mysterious Ha Van Vuong.

I never received a reply from Mr Zahler.

|