Online Magazine No.336

Black History Month, Lucian Freud, Women Surrealists, Camille Claudel, Love letters, Museum Kampa, and more | [View in browser]( [Christie's]( [BUY]( [SELL]( [STORIES]( [Christie's] [Black History Month: how art made by the African diaspora is being celebrated across the globe]( [Camille Claudel — the French sculptor whose ‘tormented’ life and career were defined by love]( ‘ [‘Her will was formidable’ — the banned collector who returned to Prague and built a museum]( [‘He thought of himself as a botanist’: why Lucian Freud’s paintings so often feature plants]( [How the women of Surrealism defied a male-dominated world to ‘carve out their own space’]( [Love letters sold at Christie’s — from Leonard Cohen, Marilyn Monroe, Miles Davis and more]( [More stories]( Editor’s picks [August Strindberg, the great Swedish playwright known for tumultuous works including The Father and Miss Julie, was also an artist. His paintings, such as Flower of the Moor, dating from 1902, tend to be as stormy as his plays, dominated by vast, brooding grey skies. This one was a present to his housekeeper]( [Estimate: £600,000-900,000 28 February, London]( [This Regency giltwood mirror is packed with decorative detail. The crest is topped with an eagle flanked by hippocampi (the fish-tailed horses of Greek myth), the base is adorned with a pair of dragons, and candleholders snake out of the frame as if on the tendrils of a luxuriant plant]( [Estimate: $4,000-6,000 until 16 February, Online]( [Friendly dinosaurs with rounded features, like creatures from children’s books, often appear in the work of Felix Treadwell — a fine example being Lost World from 2020. As the British artist, now based in Taiwan, has said, ‘I guess I have always been returning to my childhood’]( [Estimate: £7,000-10,000 23 February to 9 March, Online]( [Henri Matisse once declared that drawing was ‘the purest and most direct translation’ of his creativity. And there is indeed a powerful sense of closeness to the artist in a work such as Lylium. Evoking the summer blooms of 1945 in a few scant lines of black Conté crayon, it is a masterpiece of economy]( [Estimate: $4,000-6,000 until 15 February, Online](   © [Christie’s 2023]( [Web version]( | [Privacy policy]( | [Unsubscribe from Online Magazine]( Simone Leigh, Cupboard IX, 2019. Stoneware, steel, and raffia, 78 x 60 x 80 in (198.1 x 152.4 x 203.2 cm). Acquired through the generosity of Bridgitt and Bruce Evans and Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté. Courtesy of the artist. © Simone Leigh / Njideka Akunyili Crosby, “The Beautyful Ones” Series #4, 2015. Acrylic, photographic transfers, and coloured pencil on paper. 61 x 42 in (154.9 x 106.7 cm). Private collection. © Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner / Jamea Richmond-Edwards, This Water Runs Deep, 2022. Mixed media on canvas with sound: 2 min, 18 sec, 96 in × 15 ft (243.8 × 457.2 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Kravets Wehby Gallery / Thornton Dial, Stars of Everything, 2004. Mixed media, 248.9 x 257.8 x 52.1 cm. Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Atlanta. © 2022 Estate of Thornton Dial / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London 2022. Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio / Isaac Julien, The Lady of the Lake (Lessons of the Hour), 2019. Framed photograph on gloss inkjet paper mounted on aluminium. 160 x 213.3 cm (63 x 84 in). Edition of 6 plus 1 artist’s proof © Isaac Julien. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro / William H. Johnson, Three Great Abolitionists: A. Lincoln, F. Douglass, J. Brown, c. 1945. Oil on paperboard. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation, 1983.95.5 // Camille Claudel. Photo: Bridgeman Images // Meda Mládek with Figures (1970s) by Magdalena Abakanowicz. Photo: Museum Kampa Archive. Artwork: © Marta Magdalena Abakanowicz-Kosmowska and Jan Kosmowski Foundation, Courtesy Marlborough Gallery, New York // Lucian Freud (1922-2011), Scillonian Beachscape, 1945-46. Oil on canvas. 20¼ x 30⅛ in (51.5 x 76.5 cm). Estimate: £3,500,000-5,500,000. Offered in the 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale on 28 February 2023 at Christie’s in London // Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen, Greece, 1960. Photo: James Burke/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock