On 15th October 1958 Sotheby’s of Bond Street staged an ‘event sale’ of seven Impressionist paintings belonging to Erwin Goldschmidt: three Manets, two Cézannes, one Van Gogh and a Renoir. Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn and Somerset Maugham were there as celebrity guests. The seven lots went for 781,000 – at the time the highest price for a single sale. The event established London as the world centre of the art market and Sotheby’s as an international auction house. It began a shift in power from the dealers to the auctioneers and pointed the way for Impressionist paintings to dominate the market for the next forty years. While Sotheby’s is the lynchpin of the story, Stourton populates his narrative with a glorious rogue’s gallery of clever amateurs, eccentric scholars, brilliant emigrés, cockney traders and grandees with a flair for the deal.
9781804541975
£30.00
In stock (can be backordered)
Author James Stourton Published by Apollo ISBN 9781804541975 EAN 9781804541975 Bic Code N Cover Hardback
Independent bookshops in Tetbury and Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. Discover more about us and our work with schools.
Don’t hesitate to contact us if you can’t find the book you’re looking for.
National Book Tokens accepted here