Somerset Maugham Collection

Artists: Roderic O'Conor, Philip Wilson Steer, Graham Sutherland, Pierre Bonnard, Marie Laurencin, Fernand Leger, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Maurice Utrillo et al.
Author: W.Somerset Maugham (preface) 
Publisher: Sotheby's 
Date: 10th April 1962 
Condition: Hardback, with the printed green card covers used by Sotheby's at the time, some wear to the spine and various knocks to the edges and a slight crease to the leading edge. Internally a little tanning to the edges and some wrinkling to the lower spine corner. Illustrated in colour and black and white throughout. Loosely inserted is the Sotheby's printed list of both prices achieved and buyers' names.

The catalogue of the single-owner auction at Sotheby's in 1962, the sale of the collection of the writer Somerset Maugham. According to the preface by the owner, his reason for selling seems to have been primarily the fear that they might be stolen from him! 

Whatever the reason, the sale was one of the early examples of a star-studded evening event that created a blueprint which is still, largely, intact. Maugham had himself been present at Sotheby's in 1958 at the first such sale, the fabled Goldschmidt auction and clearly that format appealed to him too. 

Held at 9.30 in the evening with the audience in black tie, all of Maugham's 35 largely impressionist and early c20th lots sold well as buyers from Europe, the US, the UK and elsewhere fought for the works leaving a final total of over half a million pounds, a huge sum in the early 1960s.