This remarkable book begins with all the dramatic immediacy of a blockbuster novel. Peter Watson takes us behind the scenes at the Christie's auction where van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet was sold for a world record price of $82.5 million. It was the first time such access had ever been granted a writer. The author then turns back the clock to trace the rise of the art market from three key events that took place in Paris, New York and London in 1882, through three. Critical areas - painting, books and Far Eastern art - right up to the present day. Marcel Duchamp considered dealers "lice on the backs of artists." William Blake believed that "where any view of money exists, art cannot be carried on." Renoir took a more practical view: "Get this into your head," he told a friend. "There's only one indication for telling the value of paintings, and that is the sale-room." It may not be the oldest profession, but art dealing has been a. Vocation since the days of ancient Rome, and it is this crucial link between art and commerce that makes Mr. Watson's history such absorbing one. He has produced a book that is rich in both scholarship and anecdote, one that traces not only the development of the great auction houses, like Sotheby's and Christie's, and the recent and spectacular involvement of Japanese buyers, but also the development of that fascinating breed the dealers: flamboyant salesmen, fastidious. Scholars and some downright crooks. Generously illustrated with photographs, caricatures and pictures of famous paintings, this captivating and provocative history brilliantly brings to life the connoisseurs and market makers of the art world who have shaped our tastes and influenced our ideas about what constitutes great art.