For more than 10 years the art market has been rocketing upwards, insolently ignoring such lore as its supposed twinning with the property market. Indeed, as Russian, Indian and Chinese collectors have come piling into the scrum, new conventional wisdoms have budded. A choice one is that the traditional fondness of these cultures for alternative investments has led to artworks becoming another form of currency, rendering the art market virtually bullet-proof.

The global turbulence in financial markets over the past couple of weeks is testing this faith. Some players remain sanguine. “The Old Master market will be relatively unaffected, as will the classic Impressionist area,” says Philip Hoffman of the London-based Fine Art Fund, which manages three funds that buy and sell on their investors’ behalf. “There is so much new wealth coming in – I think a third of the contemporary sales were bought by Russians.