Provenance: Acquired by the present owner while stationed in Hanoi.

Bùi Xuân Phái was a Vietnamese painter. He is famous for the paintings of Hanoi Old Quarter. He also painted the actors and musicians of Vietnamese opera. The best known of all Vietnamese modern painters, Phai is respected and admired for both his art and moral character. He epitomizes for the Vietnamese the lone artist suffering for his art: he lost his teaching position at the Hanoi College of Fine Arts in 1957 for supporting Nhân Vän affair, a movement for political and cultural freedom, and he was not allowed to show his work in public until a solo exhibition in 1984. However, in 1996, he was posthumously awarded with a Ho Chí Minh prize.