Ham Nghi learned painting and sculpture techniques and dedicated his entire life to intense artistic activities as a painter and a sculptor while exiled in Algiers. After the failure of a movement against the French colonial rule, Ham Nghi was captured and exiled to Algeria, then a colony of France, in 1888. During a visit to Vietnam, grandchild of King Ham Nghi, Dr Amandine Dabat, revealed that there are about 100 of his paintings that are still preserved./.