Α Times Best Art Book of the Year, 2024

‘A riot of a book’ – Country Life's Books of the Year, 2024

The modern art trade was born overnight. On October 15, 1958, Sotheby’s on Bond Street held an ‘event sale’ of Impressionist works from an American banker’s collection, Erwin Goldschmidt: three Manets, two Cézannes, a Van Gogh, and a Renoir. Film stars and other celebrities attended dressed in black suits and watched the seven works sell for £781,000 – at the time the highest price for a single art sale.

That night, London became the global center of the art market and Sotheby’s a leading auction house. The event marked a shift of power from merchants to auctioneers and indicated the direction for the dominance of Impressionist works in the market for the next forty years. In this climate, Sotheby’s and Christie’s became a formidable business duo – as aggressive, dominant, and competitive in the art sales sector as Pepsi and Coca-Cola are in soft drinks.

The deregulation of the market was accompanied by explosive prices, colorful scandalous stories, and legal dramas. Over the decades, London transformed from a place of old master sales to a renewed center of contemporary art, a process culminated by the opening of Tate Modern in 2000.

James Stourton narrates the story of London’s art market from the immediate post-war period to the turn of the millennium in an exciting and fast-paced manner, flooding his rich and entertaining story with a legendary gallery of notorious, clever amateurs, eccentric academics, brilliant immigrants, popular traders, and moguls with a talent for deals.

Pages: 432, Year of Publication: 0203, Dimensions: 12.9x12.9cm