Notes

The Russian born artist, Vladimir Tretchikoff, arrived in Cape Town in 1947 and South Africa would remain his home for the rest of his life.

The typically smooth quality of his paintings, the licked finish, dazzling colours and subject matter, often associated with an exotic 'Eastern' sensibility, found resonance with a post World War II audience, not only in his adopted home country but also in the USA and further afield.

In the still life, Poinsettias, 1950, his usual smoothly finished canvas with highlights of thick paint is turned around as almost the entire surface is painted with distinctively visible brush strokes. In this instance he uses the texture of the paint to capture the turquoise blue of the ocean with shimmering light reflecting off the rippling sea beyond the window, the lime green and gold flowers and rich red velvety poinsettia leaves. Here only the glass vase and the windowsill are painted with a smooth or licked finish allowing the focal elements of the composition to come to the fore in this striking work.