The sound of guns from the advancing German armies could be heard clearly by John Maynard Keynes as his train trundled across northern France in the spring of 1918. The evidence of the struggle on the western front was everywhere but Keynes, then a Treasury official, was not heading to Paris on war business; he was off to buy some art.
Keynes made the risky trip to attend an auction of the studio of Edgar Degas, who had died the previous year. The man who would become the foremost economist of the 20th century returned to London with some impressionist treasures for the National Gallery, having successfully petitioned the chancellor of the exchequer to spend £20,000 at the sale.
