Great Collectors of Our Time

• An unprecedented survey of the most important collectors and collections of our time
• Magnificently illustrated with images often selected by their owners as favourites
• Features many collectors who have never spoken of their collections before

An unprecedented study of the most important collectors and art collections of our lifetime, Great Collectors of Our Time is the first major survey of contemporary art collecting since Douglas Cooper’s Great Private Collections in 1963. Beginning in Paris in 1945 at the end of the Second World War, James Stourton, Chairman of Sotheby’s UK, chronicles the transition from France’s dominance of the art market pre-1945 to the rise of contemporary art and the American collecting boom. He charts the acquisitions of the leading collectors of our time in Europe, North America and the Far East, and follows their tastes, whether in the Old Masters or the avant garde, from the twentieth century into the twenty-first. A glorious celebration of the art scene, Great Collectors of Our Time recognises the characters whose passion and genius have made the art world what it is today and whose influence over the art of the future will be felt for many years.

James Stourton was Chairman of Sotheby’s UK. He read History of Art at Cambridge and joined Sotheby’s in 1979. He is the author of Great Smaller Museums of Europe and frequently writes on the history of collecting. He has written on the subject for Apollo, The Art Newspaper, Matrix, The Independent and The Spectator and regularly lectures to the National Art Collections Fund, Sotheby’s Institute of Education and Cambridge University faculty of Art History.