The richest painter

It is one of Vladimir Tretchikoff’s most sensual paintings, titled “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery”. The model was an ordinary woman from Grabouw, who drank Earl Grey tea and shared a home-made Swiss roll cake with the Russian artist at her Cape Town apartment in 1979 when he asked her to pose for him. Her identity was a secret for many years. Brenda van der Westhuizen, then 25 years old, remembers almost choking as she drank tea when he asked if she would pose topless. He began painting her two days later, but her boyfriend insisted on keeping her identity a secret. At one stage, the Scope magazine editor asked Tretchikoff for the model’s details so that they could do a centrefold photo shoot, but he kept her name secret. Brenda eventually revealed that she was the model when she wrote her first book, “Son, See en Saffier”.

An Italian friend introduced her to an old friend at his father’s restaurant in Sea Point, and that’s how she met Tretchikoff. Two days later they met at her apartment to discuss the painting. There were four hour-long painting sessions in his studio in Bishopscourt. She was paid R350, which in those days was quite a lot, as well as a print that he signed with the words, “To Brenda, the model of this painting.” The print went missing when she took it to a gallery in Paarl for re-framing. When she went back much later to collect it, there was a new owner who didn’t know anything about the print. She remembers the artist as a charming man who enjoyed good food and wine, treated people well and kept his word. She never saw him again after the last modelling session. Brenda was already in a two-year relationship with Dirk de Villiers, a film director and producer of South African films and TV series. They met in Cape Town in 1977 when she worked as a travel consultant for the Railways’ travel bureau. He was filming “Dingetjie & Idi” when she came across the film set. He thought she was a tourist and introduced himself, offering to show her the film studios on Waal Street. She was 23, and he was in his 50s – he was her first love.

These days Brenda lives in Calitzdorp, where she is an animal welfare volunteer and holistic health therapist. Her book shares stories from her life – covering her childhood years, the painting sessions and some of her recipes (she later became a chef and restaurant manager). She didn’t intend to write a book. It came about after she published a series of stories about growing up in Gansbaai in the local community newspaper in December 2020. When she lived in Prince Albert, she entered a short story for the 2016 Prince Albert Literary Festival and was encouraged to write more.

In 1965, Tretchikoff held an exhibition in Vancouver, Canada – not at the Vancouver Art Gallery, but at Eaton’s department store. The Vancouver exhibition opened on 16 April 1955. An estimated 4,000 people per day flocked to the sixth floor of Eaton’s during the three-week show, which included 50 originals and many reproductions of his more famous work that he would sign for those who bought one. Tretchikoff made a fortune selling prints of his work in the 1950s and 1960s. Prints like “The Chinese Girl”, “Dying Swan”, and “Lost Orchid” were hanging in thousands of middle-class living rooms. He called his style symbolic realism—they were realistic, but with exotic touches that were uniquely his. Critics dismissed his paintings, and he dismissed critics. In May 1965, he expressed to a reporter from “The Province” that he was indifferent to the preferences of others, stating, “I paint what, when, and how I like. I haven’t had a commission in 15 years. I consider critics a bunch of comedians; they make me laugh all the way to the bank.” He sold 18 original paintings for $50,000 during a three-month cross-Canada tour, but he earned even more money by selling prints, totalling $70,000. The press dubbed him “the richest painter in the world, after Picasso”.

He was born Vladimir Grigoryevich Tretchikoff in Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan, on 26 December 1913. When the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917, his parents and their eight children left their landed estate and fled to Harbin in the Chinese part of Manchuria. In 1924, while still in school, he helped out with scene painting at the Harbin Opera House. It started as a hobby, but he soon realised painting was a passion. In 1929 he received his first commission from the Chinese-Eastern Railway for portraits of Lenin and Sun Yat-sen to hang in their new headquarters. They paid him 500 roubles. He used the money to move to Shanghai in 1932, where he became a cartoonist for the “Shanghai Times”. He met Natalie Telpregoff, another Russian refugee, in Shanghai. They married in 1935 and moved to Singapore, where he worked in advertising, drew cartoons for the “Straits Times” and secretly worked for the British Ministry of Information, illustrating anti-Japanese and anti-Axis propaganda posters and pamphlets. In 1938 his paintings represented Malaya at the New York World’s Fair.

His daughter, Mimi (now Mercorio), was born in 1938. When the Japanese invaded Singapore in the early hours of a December morning in 1941, Natalie and Mimi were hastily evacuated. He was put on a later ship, HMS Giang Bee, which was torpedoed by the Japanese on 13 February 1942. Tretchikoff and other survivors in two lifeboats made it to the occupied coast of Java. After three months in solitary confinement in Serang, he was released. He spent the rest of the war painting portraits under town arrest in Djakarta. One of the portrait clients was Leonora Moltema, 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 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, at age 99 years.

In 1973, Tretchikoff published his autobiography, “Pigeon’s Luck”, with Anthony Hocking, an account of his wartime experiences. Hocking contacted people in more than 21 countries for his research. In 2013, the first complete biography of the artist, “Incredible Tretchikoff” by Boris Gorelik, was published in London and Cape Town.

His first South African exhibition in 1948 was a big success, drawing large crowds. It was held at the Maskew Miller Gallery on 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 American tour. Over the course of his career, he had 252 exhibitions worldwide. Tretchikoff retained the copyright on his artwork after he sold the originals – “Why should my art only be available to the wealthy? I wanted everyone to enjoy my art.” He made sure to exhibit at accessible locations such as shopping centres and banks.

He retired to his self-designed mansion in Bishopscourt with his wife, daughter and four grandchildren. He continued to paint but stopped selling and exhibiting. Into his 80s, he still drove a pink Cadillac. He loved gardening and rock sculpting and became an avid bridge player. In 2002, he suffered a stroke. He died at a nursing home in Cape Town on 26 August 2006. Natalie Tretchikoff died on 18 July 2007. The National Gallery in Cape Town never acquired an original Tretchikoff because they did not regard him as a South African artist.

The world recognises her face as “Miss Wong” and “Lady from the Orient” in Tretchikoff’s paintings, but Wayne Young, a cosmetic surgeon in Sydney, Australia, claims that they are 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. According to In October 2013, Stephan Welz & Co auctioned off the “Miss Wong” painting for R3.5 million. Valerie died in Johannesburg in 1995.

Monika Sing-Lee was Tretchikoff’s “Chinese Girl” model. The painting is popularly known as popularly known as “The Green Lady”. While working at her uncle’s laundromat, Hen Lee Laundry on Main Road in Sea Point. Monika, who was 17 years old at the time, was asked by Tretchikoff to sit down so that he could paint her portrait. She had Dutch and Portuguese ancestry. At the time, Tretchikoff lived in an apartment in Sea Point, and his studio was in Gardens. After Monika married commercial traveller Pon su-san 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. Monika met Tretchikoff again in the 1990s, and they struck up a strong friendship. She died in June 2017 in Johannesburg. According to Tretchikoff’s daughter Mimi, the original “Chinese Girl” painting was slashed after thieves broke into the artist’s studio. Later, on a visit to San Francisco, Tretchikoff spotted the daughter of a local restaurant owner and asked if he could paint her, and she became the famous “Chinese Girl”.

“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 second original painting was sold to a woman in Chicago in 1953 for $2000. In The British jeweller Laurence Graff OBE bought it for £982 050 at a Bonham’s auction in London in March 2013. It’s now at the Delaire 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, George Chamell. 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 two additional paintings. From his studio, she could see Lion’s Head. During her breaks, she received melon and ice cream as refreshments. 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. In 1978, he passed away, leaving Champa 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. In June 2013, a Durban man purchased the original painting at an auction in Cape Town, where it sold for R1.3 million.

Another painting that fetched a high price was “Journey’s End”. In 2013, a Bonhams auction in London sold it 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 the painting after Tretchikoff’s second exhibition in Cape Town in 1949. John Schlesinger, the heir to a South African business empire, outbid him for “Orchid”. After he returned to the Karoo, he was still upset at not getting the “Orchid”, so he phoned Tretchikoff’s agent, and she suggested “Journey’s End”.

Despite the fact that the model for “Fruits of Bali” was a South African, Tretchikoff didn’t envision her in his mind. 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 Merprés. 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.

In May 2025, Tretchikoff’s painting “Lady from the Orient” sold for over $1.7m, setting a new world record for the Russia-born South African painter. The 1955 portrait is one of Tretchikoff’s most recognisable works. The portrait of a glamorous woman in a green and gold silk gown has been reporoduced on items such as tablecloths and handbags. It was sold as a reproduction in London from 1962, and was the second-highest selling print in Britain in 1962. The previous world record for a Tretchikoff work was £982 050 for “Chinese Girl” (1952), sold in London in 2013.