Nguyen Phan Chanh is considered the father of Vietnamese silk painting. He invented unique ways of preparing, applying, and washing silk. In his silk paintings, one will notice large color blocks, usually in deep brown; the artist intended to make a visual connection with Dong Ho woodblock print rooted in the Vietnamese culture.

Born into a Confucian family in Ha Tinh, Nguyen Phan Chanh studied Sino-nom and calligraphy with his father at a young age; he was raised to be a Mandarin. His father passed away when he was seven years old. To help his mother, he sold his drawings in the market and drew photos for customers. When the French changed the educational system, Nguyen Phan Chanh could no longer be a Confucius scholar. In 1923, he graduated from the Hue Pedagogy School and started teaching at Dong Ba Primary School. When Nguyen Phan Chanh heard about the establishment of l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine in Hanoi, he left his hometown and family behind and went to Hanoi to attend the school.

Nguyen Phan Chanh entered the fine art school in 1925. On the entrance exam, he received the highest score - one of the only three students with a five-star ranking throughout the school's two-decade history, along with Le Pho and Nguyen Gia Tri. Thanks to his earlier calligraphy practice, he was more familiar with using brushes and found his interest in silk painting.

Inspired by Chinese and Japanese silk paintings, Nguyen Phan Chanh developed his unique style and techniques through multiple experiments. Emphasized by solid masses of earthy colors, his paintings often portray the everyday life of ordinary Vietnamese people with subtle details. As part of the painting, he often wrote poems and signed with the date and affixed his seal in Chinese, which became one of the unique features of his paintings.

Nguyen Phan Chanh usually started his painting by washing the silk in warm water. He often worked on a drawing on paper and then applied them to the back of the silk. In this way, one would not see marks on the painting. He would then directly apply color to the painting, gently wash away the subdued pigment, and let it dry. This process would repeat several times until the artist is satisfied with the finished color.

The other unique technique of the artist is to wash the silk with tea so that the silk would look old.The newly-applied color blended with the previous colors by washing the silk several times. His meticulous way of treating the silk usually took him months to finish one silk painting. As a result, in his paintings, the color never got spilled or mixed with other colors, which shows the artist's talent and persistence.