Rogues and Scholars Boom and Bust in the London Art Market, 1945–2000

James Stourton’s entertaining, informative and very readable book Rogues and Scholars: Boom and Bust in the London Art Market, 1945–2000, recently published by Bloomsbury and singled out as the Times Best Art Book of the Year, 2024, tells the colourful story of the London art market from the immediate postwar period to the turn of the millennium and introduces us to ‘a glorious rogues’ gallery of clever amateurs, eccentric scholars, brilliant emigrés, cockney traders and grandees with a flair for the deal’. For the purposes of this talk for Insiders/Outsiders, James will pay particular attention to the ‘brilliant emigrés’, among them Frank Lloyd and Harry Fischer, Herbert Bier, Erica Brausen, Annely Juda and many more…

James Stourton is a British art historian, a former Chairman of Sotheby’s UK and the author of Great Houses of London, British Embassies, and the authorized biography of Kenneth Clark. Stourton frequently lectures to Cambridge University History of Art Faculty, Sotheby’s Institute of Education and The Art Fund, and is a senior fellow of the Institute of Historical Research. He also sits on the Heritage Memorial Fund, a government panel which meets to decide what constitutes heritage and should be saved for the nation.

Image: book cover (detail)

To book, click here.

Festival supporters can purchase Rogues & Scholars for £20 plus P&P (RRP £30) from the Bloomsbury website, using the code INSIDERSOUTSIDERS. The code is live now and will work until 27^th July.

Overseas customers can order from the UK site using the code.