Author : Robert Lacey
Release : 1999-03-01
Genre : Design
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 621/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Sotheby's by : Robert Lacey

Download or read book Sotheby's written by Robert Lacey. This book was released on 1999-03-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.