In 2003, Howard Bilton, chairman of the Hong Kong-based Sovereign Group, set up the Sovereign Asian Arts Prize, an annual award of $25,000 established “to give recognition to some of the most important artists of our time”. Two years later, he set up another prize for European artists, with a prize sum of €25,000 ($39,000). Both were ambitious projects – particularly considering that Bilton, a barrister by profession, does not profess to know much about art (although, he tells me, he did buy a painting by Craigie Aitchison in 1995 on a whim, the value of which rocketed almost immediately).

As Bilton found, it isn’t easy to create a buzz around a new European art prize. There are more than a dozen major prizes in the UK alone, including the John Moores Prize, the Turner Prize and the BP Portrait Award and the Jerwood Prizes, and new ones are being launched each year.