LONDON.- Dare to daydream and escape into the captivating worlds of fairies and fairytales, poetry, music and Shakespeare, presented across twenty works from The Albert Zuckerman Collection which will be offered during Christie's Classic Week in London this summer. Collected, lived with and loved by the renowned New York literary agent over three decades, the group comprises Pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist works, alongside Victorian and 19th century European Art. Having founded his now legendary literary agency Writers House in 1973, and shared his wisdom in Writing the Blockbuster Novel in 1994, Zuckerman helped many internationally celebrated authors from Dan Brown, and Ken Follett, to Stephen Hawking. Leading the collection is John Melhuish Strudwick's Thy Music…, 1893 (estimate: £700,000-1,000,000), which was bought from the artist by Liverpool shipping magnate William Imrie (1837-1906), one of the original partners in the White Star Line, the company that later launched the Titanic. It will be offered in the Old Masters Evening Sale on 30 June, with further works showcased in the Old Masters to Modern Day Sale on 1 July.

Sarah Reynolds, Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite & British Impressionist Art, Christie's London: “The timeless appeal of these works are a tribute to Albert Zuckerman and the home he created in his historic Chelsea brownstone in New York. With erudite whimsy he surrounded himself with pictures selected for their literary subject matter, their beauty and exquisite execution.”

Albert Zuckerman (1931-2026)

Albert Zuckerman had a lifelong interest in theatre, and Shakespeare in particular, which is reflected throughout the works in this sale. Having studied at Yale Drama School, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on Hamlet, Zuckerman went briefly into academia at Yale and Queens College, going on to write a number of plays, novels and even writing for popular soap operas including the 'Edge of Night', before changing course, and founding his literary agency Writers House. Starting out solo, his reputation grew rapidly along with the agency. Zuckerman honed his dramatic skills in the structure of the novel and helped authors to crack the bestseller list, describing himself as a 'midwife' to books, helping their creators bring them into the world. His own book Writing the Blockbuster Novel in turn became an international bestseller. Seen as an essential tool for any aspiring author, it was most recently translated into Mandarin in 2023.

John Melhuish Strudwick

John Melhuish Strudwick formed part of a second generation of Pre-Raphaelite artists who took more direct influence from the work of Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, as well as the Italian artists of the late 15th and early 16th century such as Botticelli, than from that of the original brotherhood. In lots of ways it is this late 19th century interpretation of the Italian Renaissance that informs many of our ideas of what Pre-Raphaelitism looks like today.

Thy Music…

Painted at the height of Strudwick's career, Thy Music, faintly falling, dies away… exemplifies the 'cult of beauty' created by the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic movements. In seeking to escape the ugliness of industrialisation in the latter half of the 19th century these artists focused on producing art that was beautiful, without any deeper meaning: 'Art for Art's sake'. Strudwick's exquisite painting of a dreamy young musician is a perfect example of that ideal. For Strudwick and his circle, it was the art of Florence, and in particular Sandro Botticelli that was to have the most notable impact as can clearly be seen in the framing of the figure within Thy Music…, her pure beauty, the rich fabrics of her dress and the tempera-like quality of the paint surface. Nevertheless, the picture is a very romantic British response to the Italian Renaissance. Its central theme, that of the sense of sound evoked by the musical subject, was one of the key principles of the English Aesthetic movement. Of all Strudwick paintings Thy Music displays the most elaborately patterned textiles, and arguably heralds the start of the obsession with fabrics that came to define the works of the 'Last Romantics', the final generation of Pre-Raphaelite artists.