BoereworsExpress Sep 2021

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an accountant. He nicknamed her Lenka and her face appeared in
numerous works. She became his mistress. In 1946 he discovered,
through the Red Cross, that his wife and daughter were safely in
Cape Town having arrived in 1942. He arrived in Cape Town on 13
August 1946, where Natalie and Mimi awaited him. Lenka
eventually settled in Holland, and after her husband's death she ran
their family business. In 1964 she met up with Tretchikoff in
London, during one of his exhibitions, and in 1998 she visited Cape
Town and met him again. She died on 01 August 2013, age 99
years.
His first South African exhibition in 1948 was a big success,
drawing large crowds. It was held at the Maskew Miller Gallery in
Adderley Street, which was run by Arthur and Mona Tiddy.
Another exhibition followed in Johannesburg. From these two
exhibitions he sold 25 paintings for £5,300.
In 1961 he exhibited at Harrods department store in London, which
drew more than 250,000 visitors. He sailed on the Queen Mary to
New York for the start of his America tour. Over the course of his
career he had 252 exhibitions worldwide. Tretchikoff retained the
copyright on his artworks after he sold the originals - "Why should
my art only be available to the wealthy? I want everyone to enjoy
my art." He made sure to exhibit in accessible locations – shopping
centres and banks, amongst others.
He retired to his self-designed mansion in Bishopscourt. He
continued to paint but stopped selling and exhibiting. Here he spent
his retirement with his wife, daughter and four granddaughters. Into
his 80s, he still drove a pink Cadillac. He loved gardening and rock
sculpting, and became an avid bridge player. He suffered a stroke in
2002. The wealthy artist died in Cape Town on 26 August 2006, a
year before his wife passed away.
The world knows her face as Miss
Wong and Lady from the Orient in
Tretchikoff's paintings, but Wayne
Young, a cosmetic surgeon in Sydney,
Australia, it’s portraits of his late
mother, Valerie Howe. She was born in
Port Elizabeth and was half-French,
half-Chinese. Valerie was 18 years old
when she met Tretchikoff in 1955 as
she walked her dogs in Camps Bay. A
man came up to her and said, "Hello,
I’m Tretchikoff, and I’d like to paint
you." She didn’t know who he was, but
she agreed. The Miss Wong painting
was auctioned off at a Stephan Welz &
Co auction in October 2013 for R3,5
million. Valerie died in Johannesburg in 1995.
Monika Sing-Lee was
Tretchikoff's Chinese
Girl model. While
working at her uncle’s
laundromat, Hen Lee
Laundry in Main
Road, Sea Point as a
17 year old‚
Tretchikoff asked her
to sit down so that he
could paint her portrait. She had Dutch and Portuguese ancestry. At
the time, he lived in an apartment in Sea Point and his studio was in
Gardens. After she married commercial traveller Pon Su-Suan in
1953‚ they moved to Johannesburg but the marriage fell apart early
on‚ and she raised her five children by working as a shipping clerk
and‚ in her spare time‚ as a dressmaker. She met her life partner‚
Enrico Tabasso‚ and they were together for 44 years. Monika had
two sons and three daughters. She died in June 2017 in
Johannesburg. Monika met Tretchikoff again in the 1990s and they
struck up a strong friendship. Chinese Girl sold millions in print.
It’s been called "the Mona Lisa of Kitsch". The painting appeared in
Alfred Hitchcock’s film Frenzy and made cameo appearances in
music videos like David Bowie’s The Stars Are Out Tonight and
The White Stripes’ Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground. The
original painting was sold to a woman in Chicago in 1953 for
$2,000. In 2013 it sold for almost $3.5 million at a Bonham’s
Auction in London, bought by the British jeweller Laurence Graff.
It's now at the Delaire Graff wine estate outside Stellenbosch.
The model for
The Hindu
Dancer was a
real-life Hindu
dancer,
Champa
Chameli, who
was 18 years
old and the
daughter of a
well-known
tabla player called George Chameli. Champa was the first South
African Indian girl to perform Hindu dancing in the Transvaal.
Champa met Tretchikoff at one of his exhibitions at Stuttafords in
Durban. He paid for the train ticket to Cape Town for her and her
sister a few weeks later. She also modelled for another two
paintings. From his studio, she could see Lion's Head. During
breaks, she was served melon and ice cream. She met Tretchikoff
again at the age of 26 in Johannesburg, when he signed a print of
her portrait.
She married Detective Sergeant Surendra Manoo. He died in 1978,
and Champa was left with four young daughters to raise. She
moved to Florida, USA, in 1980, where she had family members.
She was living in Palm Beach in 2013. Her daughter, Chameli Jain,
remembers the signed print hanging in their living room in
Merebank, south of Durban. Champa took it with her to the US. The
original painting was auctioned in Cape Town in June 2013 and
sold for R1.3 million, bought by a Durban man.
Another painting that fetched a high price was Journey’s End. It
was sold at a Bonhams auction in London in 2013 for £74 500.
Patrick McCay, the original owner of Journey’s End, was an avid
art collector, even when he was a struggling Karoo sheep farmer
near Hanover. He bought Journey’s End after Tretchikoff’s second
exhibition in Cape Town in 1949. He intended to acquire Lost
Orchid but lost out to John Schlesinger, the heir to a South African
business empire. After he returned to the Karoo, he was still upset
at not getting the orchid that he phoned Tretchikoff’s agent, and she
suggested Journey’s End.
Although the model for Fruits of
Bali was a South African, it wasn't
her that Tretchikoff had in his mind's
eye. He had Ni Pollok in mind. She
was a Legong dancer in Indonesia.
Ni Pollok later married the Belgian
artist Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de
Merprès. The painting was originally
owned by the Battle of Britain
veteran, Flight Lieutenant Richard
Owen Hellyer. In 1940 Hellyer was
shot down in his Spitfire over
Dunkirk. Having recovered from his
injuries, he made his way back to the
UK and re-joined his squadron at
RAF Kenley. After the war, Hellyer was demobbed and immigrated
to South Africa, where he retired to Fish Hoek, later Yzerfontein,
and then Saldanha where he owned the Saldanha Bay Hotel. He
died in South Africa on 28 October 1995.
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