‘Figures in a Garden’ work by Le Pho is sold for 2.3 million USD (Photo: Sotheby's)

According to Sotheby's auction house, the oil-in-canvas painting, which is a three-panel work originally shown at a 1973 exhibition in Palm Beach, was sold for nearly six times the pre-sale estimate. It had belonged to a private American collector.

Le Pho’s signature in both Vietnamese and Chinese can be seen at the lower right of the painting.

Le Pho, born in 1907 in Ha Dong (now Hanoi), was admitted to the Indochina Fine Arts College in 1925 and was awarded a scholarship to study in France in 1931. In 1933, Le Pho returned to Vietnam and became a teacher at his former university, the Indochina Fine Arts College. He died in Paris in 2001.