On October 15, 1958, Sotheby’s of Bond Street staged an “event sale” of seven Impressionist paintings. 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 began its inexorable rise, opening offices all over the world. A huge expansion of the market followed, accompanied by rocketing prices, colorful scandals, and legal dramas. London transformed itself to a revitalized center of contemporary art, crowned by the opening of Tate Modern. The Tate Modern united new money in London with the art world, 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. While Sotheby’s is the lynchpin of this story, Stourton populates his narrative with a glorious rogue’s gallery of eccentric scholars, clever amateurs, brilliant emigrés, and stylish grandees with a flair for the deal.