The late collector Heini Thyssen forced himself to forget his family’s Nazi involvement, but so did the countries that vied for his and his father’s pictures in the 1980s. This well documented book gives the details

Was Picasso gay?

Artists, collectors, critics, museum directors and auction house executives pick their holiday books

More artists, more women, more sex

The volume aims to be totally immersive, images rooted in their biographical context with detailed annotations

An explanation, an adoration and a lament

An exhaustive treatment of the man behind the Great Exhibition, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Prince Albert and much, much more

A compelling biography of the father and son who founded the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore

This blockbuster biography records the life of the American financier in exhaustive and exhausting detail, but fails to tell the story of his collecting

This substantial volume, predominantly photographic, is the comprehensive account of Joseph Beuys’s life and work

Similar in many ways, the subjects of these two biographies present contrasting styles of operation in the art market

This biography of Henry Clay Frick takes a psychological approach that leaves much to be desired

The story of the Regency dilettante, eccentric and collector is told in all its scandalous detail

Restoring a pioneer of the Gothic Revival to his rightful position

The distinguished antique dealer recounts how he became a black marketeer

Ian Gibson on Surrealism as an escape and the façade of eccentricity

The recent biographies of these art-world giants promise much but aside from anecdotes little is shown of the subjects’ inner lives

A profile of a figure at once diffident, self-critical and restless, beholden to few vanities

To his credit, Sylvester avoids dwelling on the artist's private life and bears down on the art

Farson's biography of the tortured artist is a pub crawl around Fifties Soho

Heiner Stachelhaus' book on the German artist leaves a lot to be desired

Semi-scandalous biographies of artists are all the rage