The Arts Society Salisbury Lecture
- £8.00
- 09 Jun 26
- St Francis\' Church, Beatrice Road, Salisbury
- 1.50 - 3.00
A lecture by James Stourton entitled Rogues & Scholars, Boom and Bust in the London Art Trade 1945-2000
Visitors are welcome, whether alone or as the guest of a member. There is a charge of £8 per lecture, which is waived should you decide there and then to become a member. Please see our website through the MORE DETAILS button to the right for information on our other activities and membership.
The modern art market was born on a single night. On 15 October 1958 Sotheby’s staged the first ‘event sale’: seven Impressionist paintings from the collection of the New York banker, Erwin Goldschmidt. Billionaires, actors, and celebrities attended in black tie and the sale made £781,000 – at the time the highest price for a single art sale. Overnight, London became the world centre of the art market and Sotheby’s an international auction house. The event signalled a shift in power from dealers to auctioneers and pointed the way for impressionist paintings to dominate the market for the next forty years. If Sotheby’s and Christie’s are in some sense the lynchpins of this lecture, London was home to hundreds of dealers, some brilliant, often eccentric, most with a touch of the gambler, whose stories have never been told.
Lecturer Biography:
James Stourton is the award-winning author of thirteen books including Rogues and Scholars, Great Houses of London, British Embassies and Kenneth Clark. He is a Senior Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research of London University. He started his career as an Old Master paintings specialist with Sotheby’s and rose to become UK Chairman. He stepped down from his position as UK Chairman in 2012. He writes regularly for The Times; Daily Telegraph; Independent; Spectator; Apollo; The Art Newspaper; and was Consultant to The Economist art collecting supplement. He is a frequent lecturer to Cambridge University History of Art Faculty; Sotheby’s Institute of Education; The Georgian Group and The Art Fund. James was also a contributor on Helen Rosslyn’s recent programme ‘Bought with Love: The Secret History of British Art Collections’ which aired on BBC Four. James sat on several government committees including the Panel of the Heritage Memorial Fund and The Acceptance in Lieu Panel. He lives in Dorset.
Image: book cover of Rogues and Scholars by James Stourton