Peter Batkin

Accompanied by his translator, Irina, he had considerable success and in 1988 he set up the first auction — entitled Russian Avant-Garde and Soviet Contemporary Art — since the Bolshevik revolution. It took an age to negotiate the terms under which overseas buyers could pay in foreign currency and be permitted to export their purchases. Eventually, a catalogue was circulated to collectors and dealers around the world. The saleroom was packed. The 119 works netted $3.5 million (about £4 million today), double the estimate.

At the celebratory dinner the next night, Andrew Solomon, an American writer who was present, reported that “the thrill of having created history brought even the most cynical of the Sotheby’s staff and the most sceptical officials in the Ministry of Culture to the brink of tears”.

Batkin was described by Michel Strauss, a fellow director of Sotheby’s, as “an expansive and generous man, immaculately and exotically dressed in a pinstripe suit, bow tie and two-tone shoes”, with a cigar dangling almost permanently from his lips. He became the trusted go-between with the Soviet authorities and the western art world.

The sale of Philby’s library took two years to negotiate, and attracted criticism. “Some people were outraged that we would sell his library — the man was a traitor. But my role is to preserve history, not see it destroyed,” Batkin said.

In the 25 years that Philby lived in Moscow after his defection from Britain in 1963, he had continued to purchase collectable books by post from the Cambridge booksellers Bowes & Bowes, whose shop he had first patronised as a student at Trinity College in the 1930s. It was at this time that Philby was recruited as a member of the communist spy ring that came to be known as “the Cambridge Five”.

Philby’s library included a set of Graham Greene’s first editions, which were sent to him and signed by the author as they were published. Greene refused to condemn his treachery and visited him in Moscow shortly before his death. The collection included volumes inherited from his fellow spy Guy Burgess, who had signed the books, as well as the works of Marx and Engels and copies of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.

The sale, which took place in 1994, raised £150,000 (about £280,000 today). “The money is for everyday life,” said Philby’s Russian widow, Rufina, who travelled to London for the auction. “The flat needs repairing; the furniture goes to pieces. I have so many holes in my life.”

The Philby deal brought Batkin to the attention of the Secret Intelligence Service — otherwise known as MI6. “It led to me being involved with our security services,” he said, “and one thing led to another.”

A born raconteur, Batkin was convivial to a fault, full of charm, but also seemingly fearless. The details of some of his encounters behind the Iron Curtain were long kept from his wife and family. When he finally came clean, he blithely told them that he had never been concerned for his personal safety, even apparently when dealing with the KGB.

He gave the impression that he would have loved to elaborate for the benefit of the wider world, but pointed out that the “other things” he had been doing were covered under the Official Secrets Act.

Back in Moscow, a greater triumph awaited Batkin. “I was asked by a German family, who had reason to believe that their collection was in Russia, if I could find their missing art,” he recalled. The tip-off set him on the trail of a treasure trove of impressionist art that had vanished at the end of the Second World War and included paintings by Renoir, Degas and Manet, which had an estimated value at today’s prices of about £700 million.

Armed with prewar black and white photographs of the paintings, he began to make inquiries. At first he was told by the Russian government that the collection did not exist, but was later warned off by the KGB, who told him to abandon the search. “I knew then there was something in it,” he said.

Eventually Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, flanked by KGB officers, admitted over dinner one night that the collection existed. Among the canvases, which had been stored in a basement of the museum for more than 40 years, was Degas’ 1876 painting of Viscount Lepic and his Daughters Crossing the Place de la Concorde, which was thought to have been destroyed during the fall of Berlin in 1945. With other pictures from the collection, it was subsequently displayed at the Hermitage as part of an exhibition called Hidden Treasures Revealed.

Batkin had the pleasure of knocking on the door of a modest bungalow in the suburbs of Berlin and telling the family that they were inheriting millions. Several of the paintings were auctioned by Sotheby’s.

He brought off one more memorable Russian coup when he persuaded Sotheby’s to enter — or rather to create — the space memorabilia market. His fellow directors were convinced that the sale of “space junk” would fail, but he prevailed and at the first auction in 1993, the Texan billionaire Ross Perot successfully bid for 227 items, including a Soyuz space capsule, for which he paid $1.6 million.

Peter Batkin was born in Ealing, west London, in 1953, the son of Steve Batkin and his wife, Uschi, who were German Jews of Russian extraction. They had fled from the Nazis and arrived in Britain as refugees before the Second World War. As a native German speaker, his father worked for British military intelligence.

Peter was educated at Marylebone Grammar School and from an early age developed an obsessive love of art. His mother stopped cleaning his bedroom because it was stuffed full of canvases.

At the age of 20 he took a job as a porter at Sotheby’s. He worked his way up, becoming a clerk, then an auctioneer and eventually a senior partner at the company’s London headquarters in New Bond Street, Mayfair.

He is survived by his wife, Judith Kellerman, a doctor who is a trustee of the Contemporary Arts Trust, and their two children. Batkin helped their son, Tobias, to launch a commercial cleaning business, which grew into a multimillion pound operation. They also have a daughter, Alice, whose disability inspired him to help set up the Hope Charity, which has undertaken pioneering work in cognitive therapy.

After retiring from Sotheby’s in 2000, Batkin devoted more time to charitable causes. As the son of Holocaust survivors, he said he was determined to oppose injustice and prejudice and remain vigilant against antisemitism. He also worked with an organisation that helps former soldiers return to civilian life. At the time of his death he was working as an executive producer on a film about doping and corruption among marathon runners.

He once had a gun put to his head during the secessionist troubles in Georgia, but after offering his assailant a bottle of vodka, he was allowed to go on his way. He dismissed suggestions of any personal bravery in his Russian exploits. “It was just about being in the right place, at the right time,” he said.

Peter Batkin, director of Sotheby’s, was born on April 11, 1953. He died on January 12, 2018, aged 64, after suffering a stroke