This volume explores the history of Sotheby's auction house, tracing its beginnings back to 1744. It was in the latter half of the 19th century, when economic instability forced the aristocrats to sell off many of their treasures, that Sotheby's began to lay the foundations of the modern art market. The Sotheby's-Christie's rivalry intensified in the early-1900s and they have been battling it out ever since over the likes of Cezanne, Picasso, Van Gogh and Monet. Lacey takes the reader through the unprecedented boom of the 1980s, when Van Gogh's "Irises" went for $53.9 million, and examines the catastrophic effects of an inflation still being felt today.
- ISBN10 0316644471
- ISBN13 9780316644471
- Publish Date 7 May 1998
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 24 March 2006
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Little, Brown & Company
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 288
- Language English