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UPCOMING AUCTIONS INTERNATIONAL THE MAGAZINE
20 March
The famous Chinese Girl is up for sale
Leonardo da Vinci has his "Mona Lisa", Picasso his "Demoiselles" – and Vladimir Tretchikoff his "Chinese Girl". An
image famous the world over, this icon of Asian beauty could sum up the entire work of the Russian painter alone.
It is a genuine best-seller: Tretchikoff sold half a million large format reproductions of it. Bonhams will be dispersing
the famous painting (£300,000 to £500,000) at its London sale on 20 March, dedicated to South African art. The
British auction house tells us that the work was bought in Chicago during the Fifties by an American woman,
Mignon Buhler, while the artist was visiting the US. After remaining in the same family ever since – and featuring
in the Tretchikoff retrospective staged by the Iziko South African National Museum of Cape Town in 2011 – the
work is now being sold by Mrs. Buhler's granddaughter. Boris Gorelik, the author of a biography of the painter due
to come out shortly, has identified the model as Sing-Lee. The painter met her in Cape Town in 1946.
S. P.-D.
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