Wholesale Rogues and Scholars by James Stourton

[Pegasus Books] A colorful and fast-moving account of how postwar London became the global center of the art market—a story of Impressionist masterpieces, dodgy dealers, and ground-breaking financial transactions. On October 15, 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 center 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 paved the way for Impressionist paintings to dominate the market for the next forty years. Sotheby's had pulled off a massive coup by capturing the Impressionist market from Paris and New York—and now began its inexorable rise, opening offices