Artist’s daughter Marguerite features in most of the pieces, kept in the family until ‘complete surprise’ donation

The Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris has received an “extraordinarily generous” donation of 61 works by Henri Matisse that have been kept in the artist’s family.

Most of the donated art – which includes paintings, drawings, etchings, lithographs and a sculpture – features the painter’s daughter Marguerite.

Closure of country’s 400-year-old service made headlines and prompted Gillian Taylor to appeal for final missives

Some describe the joy of receiving dispatches from far afield, others speak of the discipline of sitting down to carefully order their thoughts in a letter.

One writer tells of finding a poignant cache of letters after a parent’s death, while another has shared a map of where the postboxes used to be in her town.

The Royal Academician celebrates an extraordinary moment as her friend, the artist Ceal Floyer, approached the end of her life last month

• Read more: Ceal Floyer obituary

It is very hard to describe a work by the British conceptual artist Ceal Floyer because description overburdens it. Her practice was so finely wrought that it existed only in the experience between a work’s idea and its absorption. Ceal handled this equation deftly and with perfect poise, but it was a perilous and naked process with little or no place to hide, or none.

Resolving the relationship between an idea’s inception and its manifestation became increasingly fraught for her and many works never made it to fruition. Therein lay her courage. This is why I wanted to add something to last month’s obituary of her by Jonathan Watkins.