Chinese Girl (often popularly known as The Green Lady) is a 1952 painting by Vladimir Tretchikoff. It became one of the world's most popular paintings when made into prints in the 1950s and 1960s, and is one of the world's best-selling art reproductions of the twentieth century. The painting is of a Chinese young woman and is best known for the unusual skin tone used for her face--a blue-green colour, which gives the painting its popular name "The Green Lady". Though Tretchikoff maintained that the first version of this painting had been destroyed in Cape Town and he painted a new version during his 1953 tour of the US, researchers have found no proof of this claim.
The original sold for £982,050 at Bonhams auction house in London on 20 March 2013. It was purchased by British jeweller Laurence Graff. Since 30 November the same year, it has been on public display at Delaire Graff Estate near Stellenbosch, South Africa. Some scenes of Alfred Hitchcocks Frenzy show pictures of the model Monika Sing-Lee by Tretchikoff including this one. It is also used as front cover for the 1990s album Slap! by the British band Chumbawamba.
Video Chinese Girl
Model
Monika Sing-Lee was around twenty at the time having some European ancestry. Also known by her married name, Pon-Su-San, she was encountered by Tretchikoff, at the suggestion of Russian dancer Masha Arsenyeva, while working in her uncle's launderette in Cape Town, South Africa. Pon-Su-San died in Johannesburg on 14 June 2017.
Maps Chinese Girl
See also
- Red Jacket
- The Dying Swan
References
External links
- "Face to face with the woman who is Tretchi's Chinese Girl" at Mail & Guardian
- "'Chinese Girl': The Mona Lisa of kitsch" at The Independent
- "'I never made money from the Green Lady,' says Tretchikoff's model" at The Guardian
- "Gaze of the Green Lady" at BBC News
- Daily Mail, 3 June 2011: Revealed after 60 years... the real Green Lady whose face is on a million living room walls Retrieved 2012-07-30
- "I was the Chinese Girl in Tretchikoff's painting" BBC News.
- Used as an example of kitsch in the BBC TV quiz show QI.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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