Joseph Duveen, 1st Baron Duveen of Millbank
From Freepedia
Joseph Duveen (1869 – 1939), later made Baron Duveen of Millbank, was one of the most influential art dealers of all time.
Duveen was British by birth, the eldest of eight sons of Joseph Joel Duveen, a Jewish-Dutch immigrant who had set up a prosperous import business in Hull. The Duveen Brothers firm became very successful and became involved in trading antiques. Duveen Senior died in 1909 and Joseph took over the business. He moved the company into the risky, but lucrative, trade in paintings and quickly became one of the world's leading art dealers due to his good eye and skilled salesmanship.
His success is famously attributed to noticing that "Europe has a great deal of art, and America has a great deal of money." He made his fortune by buying works of art from declining European aristocrats and selling them to the millionaires of the United States. Duveen's clients included Henry Clay Frick, William Randolph Hearst, Henry E. Huntington, J.P. Morgan, Samuel H. Kress, Andrew Mellon, and John D. Rockefeller. The works that Duveen shipped across the Atlantic remain the core collections of many of the United States' most famous museums. Duveen played an important role in selling robber barons on the notion that buying art was also buying class. He greatly expanded the market, especially for Renaissance paintings; with the help of Bernard Berenson they were brought back into vogue.
Duveen quickly became extremely wealthy, and made many philanthropic donations. He gave paintings to many British galleries and he donated considerable sums to repair and expand several galleries and museums. Amongst other things he built the Duveen Gallery of the British Museum to house the Elgin Marbles. For his philanthropy he was knighted in 1919 and made a Baron in 1933.
In recent years his reputation has faded somewhat. He was responsible for the damaging restoration work done to the Marbles. A number of the paintings he sold have turned out to be fakes; it is questionable whether he knew this when they were sold.
Reference
- Meryle Secrest Duveen : A Life in Art
- S. N. Behrman Duveen
