Rogues and Scholars: Boom and Bust in the London Art Market, 19452000

(Hardback)

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On 15 October 1958 Sothebys of Bond Street staged an event sale of seven Impressionist paintings belonging to Erwin Goldschmidt: three Manets, two Czannes, 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 Sothebys 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. Sothebys had pulled off a massive coup by capturing the impressionist market from Paris and New York and now began an inexorable rise, opening offices all over the world. A huge expansion of the market followed, accompanied by rocketing prices, colourful scandals and legal dramas. London transformed itself from a fusty place of old master painting sales to a revitalised centre of contemporary art, crowned by the opening of Tate Modern in 2000. Tate Modern successfully united new, mostly foreign, money in London with art, offering its patrons a ready-made sophisticated social milieu alongside dealers in contemporary art. James Stourton tells the story of the London art market from the immediate postwar period to the turn of the millennium in engaging and fast-paced style. While Sothebys is the lynchpin of the story, Stourton populates his narrative with a glorious rogues gallery of clever amateurs, eccentric scholars, brilliant emigrs, cockney traders and grandees with a flair for the deal.

Reviews

Praise for James Stourton's Heritage: [A] huge, energetic and tightly written tome on the two-and-half-century history of conservation battles in our homeland... A masterful, dynamic and extremely readable survey of one the major issues of our times. Or all times * Literary Review *
It not only covers the conservation and protection of our buildings and landscapes, but also the wider cultural aspects * This England *
Compelling and thought-provoking, this book not only explores how Britain's rich and diverse heritage has been conserved (and in some cases destroyed) in the past, but offers a ray of hope for its future * The Observer *

Author Bio

James Stourton is a British art historian, a former Chairman of Sotheby's UK and the author of Great Houses of London, British Embassies, and the authorized biography of Kenneth Clark. Stourton frequently lectures to Cambridge University History of Art Faculty, Sotheby's Institute of Education and The Art Fund, and is a senior fellow of the Institute of Historical Research. He also sits on the Heritage Memorial Fund, a government panel which meets to decide what constitutes heritage and should be saved for the nation.