Nguyen Phan Chanh (July 21, 1892 - November 22, 1984) was born in a rural Vietnamese village, in Ha Tinh (now Nghe Tinh) province. His early education was in Chinese (as was common in pre-colonial times), and he studied Chinese calligraphy so as to pass the qualifying exams for the title of Mandarin. However, the exams were abolished before he was old enough to sit them. With his first ambition thwarted, it was decided that he should continue studying painting at the l’Ecole des Beaux-arts d’Indochine ("the Indochinese College of Fine Arts") in Hanoi.