Vladimir Grigoryevich Tretchikoff

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner, Cape Town, c.1990

Andrew Lamprecht (ed.), Tretchikoff The People's Painter, illustrated in colour, p. 65

The present lot is a portrait of a young Eurasian woman named Leonora Frederique Henriette Moltemo or as Vladimir Tretchikoff called her, Lenka, the artist's muse and partner during the two and a half years he spent in Java during World War II. Lenka would become one of Tretchikoff's most influential lovers and sitters, posing for several of the artist's most celebrated paintings, including (Portrait of Lenka Red Jacket), which later became the title of the 1998 documentary on the life and work of this renowned artist.

‘I can still smell her perfume. She wore Shalimar. She always dressed like a Paris model and had coal-black eyes and shoulder length hair. She was stunning.’

Yvonne du Toit, Tretchikoff, The People’s Painter, p.92

Years spent in Java saw Vladimir Tretchikoff and Lenka entangled in a romance that both fueled Tretchikoff creativity and challenged his practice. Bright, articulate and strikingly beautiful, Lenka played an instrumental role within Trechikoff’s oeuvre. She is the muse that encouraged a positive and enriching dimension to Trechikoff’s work, acting as a cultural crossover; a symbol for the merging of East and West.

Lenka’s Family conveys this complementary vison of East and West in every aspect. From the portrait of Lenka’s Dutch father in its ornate gold frame, to the slender figure of her Malay mother dressed in a traditional turban and Javanese blouse, Lenka personifies this fusion as she is situated in the middle of these two prominent figures, bridging her European and Eastern heritage. Lenka’s Family demonstrates Trechikoff’s ‘curious admixture for the familiar and the strange’ (Ashraf Jamal, 2011, p.61). Informed by his unique understanding of the world and his ‘estranged place within it’ (Ashraf Jamal, 2011, p.61), Lenka’s Family evokes notions of deep diversity and plurality, ways of belonging and being. 

In 1941, Vladimir Tretchikoff was engaged in British propaganda work in Singapore (working as an artist for the British Ministry of Information) when the Japanese invasion occurred. While his wife Natalie, and daughter Mimi, were successfully evacuated ahead of him, Tretchikoff's ship fell victim to Japanese torpedo attack. Embarking on a perilous journey in a lifeboat (the duration of which he was presumed dead), the young artist eventually reached the Japanese-occupied island of Java where he was held for about three months as a prisoner of war. Vladimir Tretchikoff spent the duration of the war in Java before embarking to South Africa in 1946 after receiving word through the Red Cross that his wife and daughter have found their way there as refugees of war.

Tretchikoff would spend the remainder of his life in South Africa, becoming one of the country's most celebrated artists. Upon his arrival in Africa, and reunion with his wife and family, Tretchikoff 'told [his wife] of his relationship with Lenka and offered her, as a personal gift, any of the works he had made during his Javanese period. She chose [a] portrait of Lenka and hung it above the dining room table. (du Toit, 2011, p.105)

'She was exactly what I was looking for not European, not Malay, but that intricate blend of east and west, the mixing of blood which produces the most beautiful of the worlds women, the accidental birth which symbolises the whole conflict of civilisation.’

Vladimir Tretchikoff and Anthony Hocking, Pigeons Luck, p.28