What does an equity market player have to do with 18th century portrait artists and their paintings? A lot, if you’d ask Steve Schwarzman. Who’s Steve Schwarzman?

Stephen Allen Schwarzman is an American businessman. He’s more popularly known for being the Chairman and CEO of the Blackstone Group.

Blackstone is a global private equity firm that Schwarzman established in 1985 along with the late Peter G Peterson. If that were not credit enough, here’s more: according to the Forbes magazine, Schwarzman’s net worth added up to $53.3 billion in November 2024.

Why are we talking about him? The short answer is ‘Art’. Schwarzman is now shaking up the London art market by paying record prices to acquire paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. Sir Joshua Reynolds was one of the most influential painters of eighteenth-century England. He specialised in portraits promoting the “Grand Style” in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect.........

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