The work was sold at Bonhams in London where a new auction record was set for the artist, the late Vladimir Tretchikoff, a Russian émigré who settled in South Africa and regarded his work with utmost seriousness.
He saw symbolic realism while the more polite critics saw colourful kitsch. The critic William Feaver went further in a 1974 BBC documentary, calling it "the most unpleasant work to be published in the 20th century. You've got flat form, hair that is not hair at all but is simply an opaque layer of dull and insipid paint. You have shoulders which have no substance, you have muzzy line work".
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That was not a view shared by millions of people across the world who bought prints of Chinese Girl from Woolworths in the 1950s. They saw something they liked, something a bit exotic – a beautiful blue-green Chinese woman with blazingly scarlet lips.
The work sold for £982,050 – the estimate was £300,000-500,000 – which was almost three times the amount paid for another Tretchikoff work, Portrait of Lenka (Red Jacket), which sold at the same auction house last year.
The buyer was the British businessman and jeweller Laurence Graff, who owns the Delaire Graff estate near Stellenbosch, in South Africa, where the picture will join the rest of his art collection on display.
Giles Peppiatt, director of South African art at Bonhams, said: "This was an exceptional price for a work which really does merit the word 'iconic'. And it's very happy news to hear that it is going home."
According to most profiles, Tretchikoff, who died in 2006, became the wealthiest artist in the world after Picasso, helped by the print sales of Chinese Girl and other paintings such as Balinese Girl, with her green turban and similarly red lips.
The original painting was bought directly from the artist by Mignon Buhler, the teenage daughter of an American businessman, when Tretchikoff visited Chicago during a 1954 US tour. She paid $2,000 and the work has remained in the family until Wednesday's sale by Buhler's granddaughter.
The girl in the painting is based on Monika Sing-Lee, who was working in her uncle's launderette in Cape Town when Tretchikoff saw her and asked her to model for him.
These days, Chinese Girl is making something of a comeback, popular among a younger generation who might remember it on their grandparents' walls and want to create a bit of 1950s retro chic. "Tretch" prints do not come cheap – one seller on eBay was asking for £125 on Wednesday.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/mar/20/tretchikoff-chinese-girl-auction
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