The art of portraiture flourished in Hanoi in the 1960s and 70s with around 400 portrait artists estimated to be in the capital city. Half of a century has passed and the number has dropped to under 10. One of them is Nguyen Bao Nguyen, an 80-year-old artist who has had 60 years of working in the trade.

Portrait artist Nguyen Bao Nguyen 

Nguyen owns a portrait small shop at No. 47 Hang Ngang street, in the heart of Hanoi’s Old Quarter.

Nguyen said that he started engaging in the trade at the age of 24 when he was about to graduate from the Physics Faculty under the University of Hanoi, now the Vietnam National University. He doesn’t even know whether it is destiny or not for him to be attached to this trade. Because if he hadn’t have had such a sudden and really bad stomach ache that he missed the final exam of the university, and if he hadn’t have been so talented in learning portraiture that he could manage to open a portraiture shop three months later, Nguyen would have been a physicist or followed another trade instead. But thanks to these incidents, Hanoi now has a master of portraiture.

Nguyen’s shop displays both old and new black and white portraits, which portray both Vietnamese and foreign people, from the great physicist Albert Einstein, to his late father along with portraits of foreign visitors. The shop’s space is so small that he has to arrange the paintings very close to each other.

By portraying people from different periods of time, the paintings also feature the continuity of time: from scholars and mandarins from the previous century, to Hanoi ladies in 1930s and people in modern times.

Nguyen Bao Nguyen's self-made pencils from chopsticks

Nguyen learned portraiture by himself. From the very start things such as making pencils from chopsticks, to how to manage different strokes and sketches while painting. At the beginning, he found it difficult to draw anything. After practising for a while, he found that it was more difficult to draw the eyes, mouth and chin. Then he realised that even hair, shirt or wrinkles can convey a person’s aura.

Nguyen Bao Nguyen doesn’t consider himself as an artist; however, he possesses the soul of a real artist. He has a passion for literature and music, particularly ca tru (ceremonial singing). He also has a deep love for Hanoi. 

His paintings not only reflect himself, an old man who has experienced many changes of Hanoi, but also paint his own inner characteristics: deep, nostalgic, wise and knowledgeable.

Although at first he felt pity for not following a scientific career, he later admitted that it was probably good luck for him as he explained that if he had made a deeper study in science, he could have been too rational to understand mysterious things.

A corner of Nguyen's shop at No. 47 Hang Ngang street, in the heart of Hanoi’s Old Quarter.

The mysterious things, according to him, are the spiritual world and Buddhism. Under the viewpoint of science, the “karmal” doctrine in Buddhism is like the the law of conservation of energy, thus the “karmal” of each person remains constant and is conserved over time. Nguyen believes that what a man leaves for life after death is not his body but what he has done during his lifetime.

The development of digital technology has created a change in the mind-set of people on portraiture. People can take digital cameras anywhere to capture the special moments in their lives, which has pushed portraiture to the point of being lost.

Being aware of this fact, Nguyen worries for the vague future of the art of portraiture. While it is unknown whether the art of portraiture will be lost or not, every day Nguyen walks from his house on O Quan Chuong street to his shop, despite of his old age, continuing his job with a devoted heart to portraiture.

Nhan Dan