Original Chinese Girl portrait goes to auction NEWS
Vladimir Tretchikoff's original painting of the Chinese Girl, believed to be the world's most reproduced print, is to go on sale in London.
Vladimir Tretchikoff's original painting of the Chinese Girl, believed to be the world's most reproduced print, is to go on sale in London.
The portrait, of a young Chinese girls with the very distinctive greenish skin and bright red lips, is thought to be worth around half a million pounds.
The artist, Tretchikoff passed away in 2006. He was from Russia originally and spent his childhood between there and Shanghai. He eventually settled and made his home in South Africa, where the painting was completed. The portrait is believed to be of a seventeen year old (in 1952) Monika Sing-Lee from Cape Town. The artist is thought to have spotted his subject working at her uncle's launderette in Sea Point, Cape Town.
According to Tretchikoff's biographer Boris Gorelik, the image - also known as the Green Lady - went on to become 'one of the most important pop culture icons in Britain and the Commonwealth in the 1950s'. It is now one of the most reproduced images in the world. Its popularity led to Tretchikoff being called the 'king of kitsch' - a moniker he hated, insisting he was a serious artist. The painting was bought directly from the artist by a woman in Chicago when Tretchikoff was touring the US in the 1950s.
It has remained in the same family for the past 60 years. It will go on sale on March 20th in London at Bonham's South African Art sale. The piece will also be exhibited in New York and Johannesburg prior to its sale. Director of South African Artistry at Bonham's, Giles Peppiatt stated this week:
'The combination of lustrous golden silk and the blue-sheen of the model's skin combine to produce an otherworldly glow: a luminescence that is the leitmotif of Tretchikoff's best works.'
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