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vladimir tretchikoff

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Earlier this year Vladimir Tretchikoff’s portrait Chinese Girl, often referred to as The Green Lady, was sold for almost £1 million ($1.5 million) at auction in London.

This is the story of Monika Pon-su-san (born Sing-Lee), who modeled for one of the most popular prints ever made:

 

One day in 1950, a curly-haired stranger walked into my uncle’s laundry in Cape Town, where I worked.

He stood there as I served a customer, his eyes fixed on me the whole time. He only spoke when we were alone together in the shop.

“Hello!” he said. “I’m Tretchikoff. I’d love to paint you.”

Monika Sing-Lee, who modeled for Vladimir Tretchikoff's most iconic work, was 17 when she was spotted by the artist working in her uncle's laundrette in South Africa

Monika Sing-Lee, who modeled for Vladimir Tretchikoff’s most iconic work, was 17 when she was spotted by the artist working in her uncle’s laundrette in South Africa

At that time Vladimir Tretchikoff wasn’t very famous but by chance I had read about him in a newspaper just the Saturday before.

So I was a bit nervous, but I said yes. He picked me up after work and took me back home.

I was given his wife’s gown to put on. It was silk chiffon – beautiful, beautiful stuff. It wasn’t yellow like in the painting – that was his own invention.

A lot of people ask me: “What is that stern look you had on your face? What were you thinking about?” And I always say: “Well you know, one gets tired sitting and just looking.”

Vladimir Tretchikoff's portrait Chinese Girl, often referred to as The Green Lady, was sold for almost $1.5 million at auction in London

Vladimir Tretchikoff’s portrait Chinese Girl, often referred to as The Green Lady, was sold for almost $1.5 million at auction in London

All the time I was thinking about Tretchikoff’s life. Because he had had a miserable life – during the war he’d been on a boat for three weeks without food, after his ship was bombed. Then he was imprisoned by the Japanese.

He had lost contact with his wife and daughter. Thinking they were dead he took a lover, but they weren’t dead, and as fate would have it they went to Cape Town, which is where he ended up too. So they got back together again.

I liked him very much. He was a funny man – we always laughed a lot. In all, I was paid six pounds and five shillings for the work.

He had a class of about 20 pupils. All the time I was sitting for him they could see me but I was never allowed to see the painting – it always had its back to me.

I would nag him: “What are you going to call it?” He said that a name would come to him later on. It was only at the end of the six or 10 weeks – I can’t remember exactly how long it took – on the night his exhibition opened that he said it was called Chinese Girl. I thought that was very ordinary.

And when I saw the painting I was so shocked. I thought I looked like a monster from a horror film. I pulled an ugly face and said: “Ugh – green face!”

Right away people started to recognize me. I remember going to a supermarket and a woman shouted: “Look at this girl! She looks just like the painting!”

I decided I had to buy a print. By the time I went to him Tretchikoff had run out, so he gave me one he had used in London when he was on tour. I’ve got it in my lounge.

There was a block of flats in Cape Town, filled with artists. The man on the ground floor was a sculptor and one day he asked Tretchikoff: “Can I borrow your model?” He wanted to cast a bronze of my face. But Tretchikoff said: “Certainly not!”

I had so many modelling offers but – stupid me – I went and got married and had children, so that was that. I didn’t socialize much, with five children to look after, so I was hidden away from Cape Town’s artists. The offers stopped coming.

I was so disappointed to miss the auction recently. My daughters said to me: “The painting’s sold! The painting’s sold!” And when I found out it had gone for £1 million, I jumped up and down, up and down!

Everybody’s fascinated by that painting. I don’t know what it is about it really.

One of my daughters – the second youngest, who is supposed to look like me – said: “I wish I had a lot of money and then I would buy that painting and keep it forever in my own house.”

When I was asked by a journalist if I would let another artist paint me at this moment in time, I said: “No… but if Tretchikoff were alive, I would let him paint me again.”

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Vladimir Tretchikoff’s Chinese Girl portrait, thought to be the world’s most reproduced painting, has fetched £982,050 ($1,570,000) at Bonhams auction in London.

The sum, which includes a 12% buyer’s premium, was around twice what had been predicted by auction house Bonhams.

It was thought the portrait of a young Chinese girl with green-hued skin and ruby lips would fetch up to £500,000 ($800,000).

It was bought by British businessman and jeweller Laurence Graff and will go on public display in South Africa.

According to a Bonhams representative, the Chinese Girl will be exhibited, alongside the rest of the diamond retailer’s art collection, at the Delaire Graff Estate, near Stellenbosch in the Western Cape.

The sale fetched more than double the highest price – £384,000 – previously raised at auction by a Tretchikoff work.

Vladimir Tretchikoff's Chinese Girl portrait is thought to be the world's most reproduced painting

Vladimir Tretchikoff’s Chinese Girl portrait is thought to be the world’s most reproduced painting

Vladimir Tretchikoff, who grew up in Russia and Shanghai, eventually settled in South Africa in 1946 and completed the Chinese Girl in Cape Town in 1953.

His model was Monika Sing-Lee, then 17, whom he spotted working at her uncle’s launderette in Sea Point, Cape Town.

In his 1973 memoir Pigeon’s Luck, Vladimir Tretchikoff said he had put his “heart and soul” into a painting he hoped had “caught the essence of Chinese womanhood”.

The Chinese Girl’s popularity led to Vladimir Tretchikoff, who died in 2006, being labeled the “king of kitsch” – though his foundation describes him as “the people’s painter”.

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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.

Russian artist Vladimir Tretchikoff, who died in 2006, claimed that by the end of his career he had sold half a million large-format reproductions of the print worldwide.

The portrait of a young Chinese girl with distinctive green-hued skin and ruby lips could fetch up to £500,000 ($800,000).

The painting will form part of Bonhams’ South African art sale on March 20.

Vladimir Tretchikoff, who grew up in Russia and Shanghai, eventually settled in South Africa in 1946 and painted the Chinese Girl in Cape Town in 1952.

His model was Monika Sing-Lee, then 17, whom he spotted working at her uncle’s launderette in Sea Point, Cape Town.

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

According to Vladimir 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”.

Its popularity led to Vladimir Tretchikoff being called the “king of kitsch” – a moniker he hated, insisting he was a serious artist.

The painting was brought directly from the artist by a woman in Chicago when Vladimir Tretchikoff was touring the US in the 1950s. It has remained in the same family for the past 60 years.

“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,” said Giles Peppiatt, director of South African Art at Bonhams.

Chinese Girl will be exhibited in New York and Johannesburg prior to its sale.

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