Joseph Inguimberty

Joseph Inguimberty was a French painter born in Marseille. In 1910, he entered the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Marseille, and in 1913, the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

During the 1920s he travelled in Europe and Belgium, mainly painting scenes of working life. In 1925 he was appointed as a teacher in Indochina, where he taught oil painting at the Hanoi Fine Arts School. Wonderstruck by the decoration of the temples there, he also learned the lacquer technique.

Inguimberty was an artist who loved to paint outdoors from life, like the Impressionists. His favourite themes were delta landscapes, paddy fields and Tonkinese women. In his compositions, the forms are simplified, and the colours are outlined and laid on flat with a brush, and sometimes a knife. The dominant shades are green and ochre.

When he arrived in Hanoi, he decided to focus on landscapes, as with this painting of flat, endless paddy fields. He treated all the figures, countryside and animals in the same way. Although the artist based his work on pure observation, the rendering still left room for a certain flexibility in his approach. He finally returned to France in 1946, and went to live in Menton. The subjects of his painting changed, and were now focused on the landscapes of Provence, including the rocky inlets of Marseille, the hinterland of Menton, and the Alpilles.

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