A photograph of Champa Manooa in the 1960s. Manooa modelled for Vladimir Tretchikoffs The Hindu Dancer, which was auctioned this week for R1.3m
Champa Manooa, the face behind Russian-born South African artist Vladimir Tretchikoff’s The Hindu Dancer, is delighted her portrait has found a home in Durban.
“It is where I grew up and where I was married,” she told The Mercury from her home in Florida in the US last night.
The painting was auctioned in Cape Town on Tuesday for R1.3 million. It was bought by a Durban man who has not made himself known.
Manooa, who was then Champa Chameli, was a 17-year-old Indian dancer when she sat for the artist in the 1950s. Last night she was surprised to hear the painting had fetched R1.3m.
“I knew Tretchikoff was famous when I sat for the portrait,” she said, “but I certainly never thought a picture of me would sell for so much.”
She recalled how the artist had decided he would paint her with multiple arms.
A photograph of Champa Manooa in the 1960s. Manooa modelled for Vladimir Tretchikoffs The Hindu Dancer, which was auctioned this week for R1.3m.
“I showed him all my dance moves and he liked them all so much he could not pick one,” she explained. “So he suggested incorporating all of them into the painting.”
Decades of searching for Manooa, who will be 80 this year, ended in Durban this week when newspaper articles calling for information on the mystery beauty’s whereabouts were seen by her Merebank relatives.
A phone call from them to her daughter in Cape Town solved the puzzle that baffled Russian author Boris Gorelik, who penned Tretchikoff’s biography, and who had searched for the woman who inspired the The Hindu Dancer for years.
Manooa had no idea anyone was looking for her.
“I tried to get in touch with Tretchikoff again a few times while he was alive, but he was such a busy man,” she said.
Tretchikoff was known for featuring the faces of beautiful – but mysterious – women in his work.
Champa Manooa, who modelled for the work, is from Durban but now lives in Florida in the US.
Yesterday, one of Manooa’s four daughters, Chameli Jain, said relatives in Durban had seen an article in The Mercury’s sister paper Post about the search for her mother.
An article was also published in The Mercury.
“The picture in the newspaper showed my mom being handed a signed copy of the painting by Tretchikoff. My mom still has that painting hanging in her home in Florida.”
Jain, whose sisters live in Florida, said she was surprised and excited that there had been such a long search for her mother.
“They obviously didn’t look hard enough,” Jain laughed.
She explained that her mother, who was living in Merebank at the time, had met Tretchikoff at one of his exhibitions at Stuttafords, in West Street, which is now Dr Pixley ka Seme Street, in Durban.
Manooa attended the exhibition after she “fell in love” with another one of the artist’s paintings, The Dying Swan.
While there, she asked him why he had never painted an Indian woman.
“He told her he had never found one before, to which she replied that she was Indian. He told her she had beautiful eyes. When he heard she was a dancer, he was even more interested in painting her,” Jain said.
A few weeks later Manooa met Tretchikoff in Cape Town after he had paid for a train ticket for her and her sister. He had time constraints and, although he painted the major parts of the picture while she sat for him, he did not complete it. He kept the painting with him and added details such as jewellery, and then decided it didn’t need more work as it was beautiful the way it was, Jain said.
She said she thought it would have sold for more than R1.3m, considering some of his other paintings had fetched more, including The Chinese Girl which had sold for about R14m.
“I am so absolutely proud of my mom and I am so glad she is finally getting this recognition.
“Although Tretchikoff did two more sketches of her, she was never painted again, although she was photographed many times. She was strikingly beautiful,” Jain said.
Tretchikoff had a stroke in 2002 that left him unable to paint, and he died in Cape Town in 2006.
