The grandson of English cricketer and New Scientist founder Max Raison, and the son of Thatcher-era Government minister The Right Hon.
[3][4][5][6] Raison became Head of the Old Masters Department in Paris in 1993 and was based in France until 1996, when he moved back to the UK to assume the same role at Christie's London.
In 2004, he and his New York counterpart Anthony Crichton-Stuart played an instrumental role in the acquisition of the Hall and Knight galleries by Christie's.
[2] In 2004, he led the private treaty sale of Duccio’s Stroganoff Madonna to the Metropolitan Museum of Art[8][9] in New York City for a record sum, then the highest price ever paid by the Met for any purchase, the second highest price ever paid for an Old Master privately and the most expensive Old Master ever sold by Christie's, breaking the record held since 1989 by the Pontormo Halberdier.
He is known for his expertise in French and Spanish art and collections, where his activity has included, respectively, the discovery of a lifetime portrait of Anton Fugger, acquired in 2002 by the Louvre,[21] and of an early work[22] by El Greco, acquired from Christie's by the Historical Museum of Crete in the artist's birthplace of Heraklion, still one of the only autograph works by El Greco in any public or private collection in Greece.