The Vietnamese art market has a new benchmark. On the evening of 28 September 2026, Vũ Cao Đàm's Conversation d'élégantes au jardin sold for HKD 28.9 million (about US$3.7 million) at Sotheby's Hong Kong Modern and Contemporary Art evening sale, setting an auction record for the artist and the highest price ever achieved for any Vietnamese artwork. Catalogued as lot 139, the work carried a pre-sale estimate of HKD 8 million to HKD 19.6 million and drew 14 bids before the hammer fell, far exceeding expectations. The ink and gouache on silk is the artist's largest multi-figure silk painting and had headlined Sotheby's 2008 sale of an important collection of Vietnamese paintings, giving it a well-documented market pedigree. The result surpasses the previous records held by fellow Vietnamese modernists Mai Trung Thứ and Lê Phổ, and it arrived amid a strong evening for Southeast Asian art at Sotheby's Hong Kong. The broader sale totaled HK$671 million (US$87.3 million) with an 88% sell-through rate, suggesting that collectors in Asia are widening their focus beyond the dominant Chinese and Japanese names toward regional modern masters. Vũ Cao Đàm (1908–2000), who worked in France after leaving Vietnam, is known for his refined silk paintings of women and poetic domestic scenes. His elevation to the top of the Vietnamese market reflects a broader re-rating of the country's modern artists, whose works have drawn growing institutional and collector attention in recent years. The sale also underlined the appetite for museum-quality, large-scale works by Southeast Asian artists as auction houses expand their regional offerings in Hong Kong.