967 - Eberhard Hückstädt, Portrait of Camille Claudel, mixed media with certificate, 1999

Eberhard Hückstädt, Portrait of Camille Claudel, mixed media with certificate, 1999 Mixed media/paper, mounted on backing board, signed lower left, dated '1 VIII (19)99' at centre left. Frontal bust portrait of a young woman in cool grey, white and ochre tones: the face with dark-rimmed eyes and a closed mouth accented in red, the dark hair laid around the head in broad, sweeping strokes. The ground is built up from several thinly superimposed layers of paint and covered with incised lines, out of which the figure emerges as a shadowy presence. Accompanied by the certificate of Galerie Hohmann Walsrode with the artist's name, title, technique, measurements and catalogue raisonné number 3697. Good condition, edges stained at the top. Image 78.5 x 50 cm (HxW). Mount, behind glass, framed in a silver-coloured moulding, overall size 103.5 x 73.5 cm (HxW). Eberhard Hückstädt, born in Potsdam in 1936, trained from 1950 as a decorative painter in Grimmen and practised that trade until 1956. From 1956 to 1959 he studied decorative painting and applied graphics at the technical college for applied art in Heiligendamm, then until 1964 under Heinz Lohmar and Rudolf Bergander. He was regarded as one of the best-known younger artists and most important portrait painters of the GDR; in 1984 he moved to Hanover with his wife and children. Camille Claudel (1864-1943) was a sculptor, pupil and companion of Auguste Rodin; after the break with him she spent the last thirty years of her life in psychiatric institutions. Her rediscovery from the 1980s onwards made her one of the most frequently portrayed women artists of the modern era.