This research examines both the form and content of the oil painting Thiếu nữ bên hoa huệ (Young Lady with Lily (YLL), 1943) within colonial and national projects to construct the native cultural identity. Way of looking at the painting “as wide as social existence” aims to reveal influences of colonial imaginations of the native culture in postcolonial Vietnamese national imagination of women’s moral values. As such, this research engages with postcolonial scholarship that deconstructs colonial influences on modern Vietnamese painting.