Maurice Durand's "Folk Painting of Vietnam" study was first published in 1960 by the 'Ecole francaise d'Extreme-Orient'. This collection includes more than 400 folk artworks with detailed and thorough research, analysis, interpretation of the author. This is the result of many years of research and collection in the streets of Hanoi and neighboring areas in the Northern delta. The book is especially interesting when Vietnamese folklore was seen through the lens of a talented foreign scholar in the mid-twentieth century. Its uniqueness is reflected in the diversity of topics being exploited: daily life, wishes, blessings, religious practices, creeds, paintings illustrations of proverbs, historical illustrations, literature, four seasons, landscapes, fruits and animals. Finally, the uniqueness of the work is that Maurice Durand was the first scholar to discuss the field of folk art through the combination of a meticulous description of the process of painting, the type of painting , analyze topics and place them in a cultural and historical context, from the divine to the mundane.