Chinese Girl

Chinese Girl
Artist	Vladimir Tretchikoff
Year	1952–1953
Medium	Oil on canvas

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 girl 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 almost $3.5 million (£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.

The model was Monika Sing-Lee, who was around twenty at the time. She was spotted by Tretchikoff while working in her uncle's launderette in Cape Town, South Africa.

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Wikipedia