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When Joseph Duveen, the most spectacular art dealer of all
time, travelled from one to another of his three galleries,
in Paris, New York, and London, his business, including a
certain amount of his stock in trade, travelled with him.
His business was highly personal, and during his absence his
establishments dozed. They jumped to attention only upon the
kinetic arrival of the Master. Early in life, Duveen—who
became Lord Duveen of Millbank before he died in 1939, at
the age of sixty-nine—noticed that Europe had plenty of art
and America had plenty of money, and his entire astonishing
career was the product of that simple observation. Beginning
in 1886, when he was seventeen, he was perpetually
journeying between Europe, where he stocked up, and America,
where he sold. In later years, his annual itinerary was
relatively fixed: At the end of May, he would leave New York
for London, where he spent June and July; then he would go
to Paris for a week or two; from there he would go to Vittel,
a health resort in the Vosges Mountains, where he took a
three-week cure; from Vittel he would return to Paris for
another fortnight; after that, he would go back to London;
sometime in September, he would set sail for New York, where
he stayed through the winter and early spring.
Occasionally, Duveen departed from his routine to help out a
valuable customer. If, say, he was in Paris and Andrew
Mellon or Jules Bache was coming there, he would
considerately remain a bit longer than usual, to assist
Mellon or Bache with his education in art. Although,
according to some authorities, especially those in his
native England, Duveen's knowledge of art was conspicuously
exceeded by his enthusiasm for it, he was regarded by most
of his wealthy American clients as little less than
omniscient. "To the Caliph I may be dirt, but to dirt I am
the Caliph!" says Hajj the beggar in Edward Knoblock's
"Kismet." Hajj's estimate of his social position
approximated Duveen's standing as a scholar. To his major
pupils, Duveen extended extracurricular courtesies. He
permitted Bache to store supplies of his favorite cigars in
the vaults of the Duveen establishments in London and Paris.
One day, as Bache was leaving his hotel in Paris for his
boat train, he realized that he didn't have enough cigars to
last him for the Atlantic crossing. He made a quick detour
to Duveen's to replenish. Duveen was not in Paris, and Bache
was greeted by Bertram Boggis, then Duveen's chief assistant
and today one of the heads of the firm of Duveen Brothers.
While Bache was waiting for the cigars to appear, Boggis
showed him a Van Dyck and told him Duveen had earmarked it
for him. Bache was so entranced with the picture that he
bought it on the spot and almost forgot about the cigars; he
finally went off to the train with both. There was no charge
for storing the cigars, but the Van Dyck cost him two
hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.
Probably never before had a merchant brought to such
exquisite perfection the large-minded art of casting bread
upon the waters. There was almost nothing Duveen wouldn't do
for his important clients. Immensely rich Americans, shy and
suspicious of casual contacts because of their wealth, often
didn't know where to go or what to do with themselves when
they were abroad. Duveen provided entrée
to the great country homes of the nobility; the
coincidence that their noble owners often had ancestral
portraits to sell did not deter Duveen. He also wangled
hotel accommodations and passage on sold-out ships. He got
his clients houses, or he provided architects to build them
houses, and then saw to it that the architects planned the
interiors with wall space that demanded plenty of pictures.
He even selected brides or bridegrooms for some of his
clients, and presided over the weddings with avuncular
benevolence. These selections had to meet the same refined
standard that governed his choice of houses for his
clients—a potential receptivity to expensive art.
On immediate issues, Duveen was not a patient man. With
choleric imperialism, he felt that the world must stop while
he got what he wanted. He had a convulsive drive, a
boundless and explosive fervor, especially for a picture he
had just bought, and a reckless contempt for works of art
handled by rival dealers. On one occasion, an extremely
respectable High Church duke was considering a religious
painting by an Old Master that Thomas Agnew & Sons, the
distinguished English art firm, had offered him. He asked
Duveen to look at it. "Very nice, my dear fellow, very
nice," said Duveen. "But I suppose you are aware that those
cherubs are homosexual." The painting went back to Agnew's.
When, presently, through the tortuous channels of
picture-dealing, it came into Duveen's possession, the
cherubs, by some miraculous Duveen therapy, were restored to
sexual normality. Similarly, in New York, a millionaire
collector who was so undisciplined that he was thinking of
buying a sixteenth-century Italian painting from another
dealer asked Duveen to his mansion on Fifth Avenue to look
at it. The prospective buyer watched Duveen's face closely
and saw his nostrils quiver. "I sniff fresh paint," said
Duveen sorrowfully. His remarks about other people's
pictures sometimes resulted in lawsuits that lasted for
years, cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars, and
brought to the courts of London, New York, or Paris
international convocations of experts to thrash things out.
It was one of the crosses Duveen had to hear that the
temperaments of the men he dealt with in this country were
the direct opposite of his own. The great American
millionaires of the Duveen Era were slow-speaking and
slow-thinking, cautious, secretive—in Duveen's eyes,
maddeningly deliberate. Those other emperors, the emperors
of oil and steel, of department stores and railroads and
newspapers, of stocks and bonds, of utilities and banking
houses, had trained themselves to talk slowly, pausing
lengthily before each word and especially before each verb,
in order to keep themselves from sliding over into the abyss
of commitment. For a man like Duveen, who was congenitally
unable to keep quiet, the necessity of dealing constantly
with cryptic men like the elder J. P. Morgan and Henry Clay
Frick and Mellon was ulcerating. He would read a letter from
one of his important clients twenty times, pondering each
evasively phrased sentence. "What does he mean by that?" he
would ask his secretary. "Is he interested in the picture or
isn't he?"
For a great many years, Duveen's secretary was an Englishman
named H. W. Morgan. Some have said that Duveen hired him
simply because his name was Morgan. It has even been
suggested that Duveen made his secretary adopt the name, so
that he could feel he was sending for Morgan instead of
Morgan's sending for him. In any case, one of H. W. Morgan's
duties was now and then to impersonate Mellon. The day
before a scheduled interview with any of his important
clients, Duveen would go to bed to map out the strategic
possibilities. But before such an interview with Mellon,
Duveen would, in addition to going to bed, rehearse with
Morgan. Mellon was particularly hard to deal with, because
he was supremely inscrutable. "Now, Morgan, you are Mellon,"
Duveen would say. "Now you go out and come in." Morgan would
come in as Mellon, and Duveen would start peppering him with
questions; Morgan would try to put himself into Mellon's
inscrutable state of mind and answer without saying
anything. The fact that Mellon's Pittsburgh speech was now
strongly doused in Cockney did not impair the illusion for
Duveen.
Duveen sometimes came home from a talk with Mellon so upset
by Mellon's doubts that he had to go back to bed, this time
to ponder the veiled issues. There were never any doubts in
his own mind. Each picture he had to sell, each tapestry,
each piece of sculpture was the greatest since the last one
and until the next one. How could these men dawdle, thwart
their itch to own these magnificent works, because of a mere
matter of price? They could replace the money many times
over, but they were acquiring the irreplaceable when they
bought, simply by paying Duveen's price for it, a Duveen.
(When a Titian or a Raphael or a Donatello passed from
Duveen into the hands of Joseph E. Widener or Benjamin
Altman or Samuel H. Kress, it became a Widener or an Altman
or a Kress, but until then it was a Duveen.) Still, Duveen
learned to bear this cross, and even to manipulate it a bit.
While coping with their doubts, he solidified his own
convictions, and then charged them extra for the time and
trouble he had taken doing it. Making his clients conscious
that whereas he had unique access to great art, his outlets
for it were multiple, he watched their doubts about the
prices of the art evolving into more acute doubts about
whether he would let them buy it.
Whenever Duveen was in Paris or Vittel, he received daily
reports from his galleries in New York and London—précis of
the Callers' Books, telling what customers or nibblers had
come in, what pictures they had looked at and for how long,
what they had said, and so on. From other sources he got
reports on any major collections being offered for sale, and
photographs of their treasures. There were also reports from
his "runners," the francstireurs he deployed all over Europe
to hunt out noblemen on the verge of settling for solvency
and a bit of loose change at the sacrifice of some of their
family portraits. These reports might include the gossip of
servants who had overheard the master saying to an important
art dealer, as they savored the bouquet of an after-dinner
brandy, that he might—in certain circumstances, he just
might—consider parting with the lovely titled Gainsborough
lady smiling graciously down at them from over a mantel.
Once Duveen had such a clue, he hastened to telescope the
circumstances in which the Gainsborough-owner just might.
Often the dealer who had enjoyed the brandy did not find
himself in a position to enjoy the emolument that went with
handling the Gainsborough. In negotiating with the heads of
noble families, Duveen usually won hands down over other
dealers; the brashness and impetuosity of his attack simply
bowled the dukes and barons over. He didn't waste his time
and theirs on art patter (he reserved that for his American
clients); he talked prices, and big prices. He would say,
"Greatest thing I ever saw! Will pay the biggest
price you ever saw!" To this technique the dukes and
barons responded warmly. They were familiar with it from
their extensive experience in buying and selling horses.
In Paris, Duveen often got frantic letters from his
comptroller in New York imploring him to stop buying.
Duveen, who was never as elated by a sale as he was by a
purchase, usually laid out over a million dollars on his
annual trip abroad, and occasionally three or four times
that sum. These immoderate disbursals of money paralleled
the self-indulgence of Morgan. Frederick Lewis Allen, in his
biography of Morgan, writes, "As for his purchases of art,
they were made on such a scale that an annual worry at 23
Wall Street at the year end, when the books of the firm were
balanced, was whether Morgan's personal balance in New York
would be large enough to meet the debit balances accumulated
through the year as a result of his habit of paying for
works of art with checks drawn on the London or the Paris
firm." Each man, his bookkeeper thought, spent too much on
art.
Duveen's finances were a puzzle to his friends, his clients,
his associates, and other art dealers. In July, 1930, when
art dealers all over the world were gasping for money, he
stupefied them by paying four and a half million dollars for
the Gustave Dreyfus Collection. Bache, who was a close
friend as well as a client, once said, "I think I understand
Joe pretty well—his purchases and his sales methods. But I
confess I am quite in the dark about his financing."
Depression or no depression, it was Duveen's principle to
pay the highest conceivable prices, and he usually succeeded
in doing so. Adherence to this principle required finesse,
sometimes even lack of finesse. A titled Englishwoman had a
family portrait to sell. Duveen asked her what she wanted
for it. Meekly, she mentioned eighteen thousand pounds.
Duveen was indignant. "What?" he cried. "Eighteen thousand
pounds for a picture of this quality? Ridiculous, my dear
lady! Ridiculous!" He began to extol the virtues of the
picture, as if he were selling it—as, indeed, he already was
in his mind—instead of buying it. A kind of haggle in
reverse ensued. Finally, the owner asked him what he thought
the picture was worth. Duveen, who had already decided what
he would charge some American customer—a price he could not
conscientiously ask for a picture that had cost him a mere
eighteen thousand pounds—shouted reproachfully at her, "My
dear lady, the very least you should let that picture go for
is twenty-five thousand pounds!" Swept off her feet by his
enthusiasm, the lady capitulated.
Duveen had enormous respect for the prices he set on the
objects he bought and sold. Often his clients tried, in
various ways, to maneuver him into a position where he might
relax his high standards, but he nearly always managed to
keep them inviolate. There was an instance of this kind of
maneuvering in 1934, which concerned three busts from the
Dreyfus Collection—a Verrocchio, a Donatello, and a
Desiderio da Settignano. Duveen offered this trio to John D.
Rockefeller, Jr., for a million and a half dollars.
Rockefeller felt that the price was rather high. Duveen, on
the other hand, felt that, considering the quality of the
busts, he was practically giving them away. He allowed
Rockefeller, in writing, a year's option on the busts; they
were to remain for a year in the Rockefeller mansion as
non-paying guests. During that time, Duveen hoped, the
attraction the chary host felt for his visitors would ripen
into an emotion that was more intense. After several months,
the attraction did ripen into affection, but not a million
and a half dollars' worth, and Rockefeller wrote Duveen a
letter with a counter-proposal. He had some tapestries for
which he had paid a quarter of a million dollars. He
proposed to send Duveen these tapestries, so that he
could have a chance to become fond of them, and to
buy the busts for a million dollars, throwing the tapestries
in as lagniappe. As the depression was still on and most
people were feeling the effects of it, Rockefeller thought,
he said, that Duveen might welcome the million in cash. This
letter threw Duveen into a flurry. It bothered him more than
most letters he got from clients. His legal adviser told him
that the counter-offer, unless immediately repudiated, might
result in a cancellation of the option. Duveen sat down and
wrote a letter himself. As for the tapestries, he told
Rockefeller, he had some tapestries and didn't want any
more. Moreover, he stated, he was not in the stock market,
and therefore not in the least affected by the depression.
He let fall a few phrases of sympathy for those who were; by
his air of surprised incredulity at the existence of people
who felt the depression, Duveen managed to convey the
suggestion that if Rockefeller was in temporary financial
difficulty, he, Duveen, was ready to come to his assistance.
He appreciated Rockefeller's offer of a million dollars in
cash, but he implied that, just as he already had some
tapestries, he also already had a million dollars. Having
dispatched the letter, Duveen, with his customary optimism,
prophesied to his associates that Rockefeller would
eventually buy the busts at his price. At Christmastime,
with a week or so of the option still to go, Rockefeller
told Duveen that his final decision was not to buy the
busts, and asked Duveen to take them back. Again, Duveen was
prepared to be generous, this time about the security of
Rockefeller's dwelling. "Never mind," he said. "Keep them in
your house. They're as safe there as they would be in mine."
In all love affairs, there comes a moment when desire
demands possession. For Rockefeller, this occurred on the
day before the option expired. On the thirty-first of
December, at the eleventh hour, he informed Duveen that he
was buying the busts at a million and a half.
On his visits to Paris, Duveen often gazed admiringly at the
building occupied by the Ministry of Marine, a beautiful
production of the illustrious Jacques-Ange Gabriel, court
architect to Louis XV. The noble facade executed by Gabriel
stretches its lovely length to front an entire block along
the Place de la Concorde. The Ministry consists of a
tremendous central edifice, flanked by great wings. One day,
in his lively imagination, Duveen snipped off and reduced in
size one of Gabriel's wings and saw it transferred to New
York. With his immense energy and drive, he set about
materializing this snip at once. In 1911, he engaged a
Philadelphia architect, Horace Trumbauer, and a Paris
architect, Réné
Sergent, to put up a five-story, thirty-room reproduction of
Gabriel's wing at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-sixth
Street, to serve as his gallery. Even the stone was
French—imported from quarries near St. Quentin and
Chassignelles. The total cost was a million dollars, but
this was not too much for an establishment that was to house
the Duveen treasures. The eight or ten big clients who would
enter the building—the handful of men with whom Duveen did
the major part of his business—to look at the garnered
possessions of kings and emperors and high ecclesiastics
were rulers, too, and must he provided with an environment
that would tend to make them conscious of their right to
inherit these possessions.
In Paris, Duveen always stayed at the Ritz. A permanent
guest at this hotel, with whom Duveen had many encounters
over the years, was Calouste S. Gulbenkian, the Armenian oil
Croesus. Gulbenkian, who controls now, as he controlled
then, a good deal of the oil in Iraq, is often said to be
the richest man in Europe, and possibly in the world, and
possesses one of the world's most valuable art collections.
Of all his achievements, perhaps the most chic is that he
several times outmaneuvered Duveen. One day, happening upon
Duveen in one of the Ritz elevators, Gulbenkian told him
that he knew of three fine English pictures for sale—a
Reynolds, a Lawrence, and a Gainsborough. The owner wanted
to sell them in a Lot. Gulbenkian proposed that Duveen buy
them and give him, as a reward for his tip, an option on any
one of the three, with this proviso; Duveen was to put his
own prices on them before Gulbenkian made his choice known,
but the total price was not to exceed what Duveen had paid.
Duveen bought the pictures and went about setting the
individual prices. As he wanted from Gulbenkian a sum that
would become the richest man in Europe, he pondered deeply
before deciding which picture he thought Gulbenkian would
choose. The finest, although the least dazzling, of the
three was Gainsborough's "Portrait of Mrs. Lowndes-Stone."
The showiest was the Lawrence. Duveen concluded that the
Lawrence would have the greatest appeal to his client's
Oriental taste. He put a Duveen price on the Lawrence, and
therefore had to set reasonable figures for the two others.
He overlooked the fact that Gulbenkian is a canny student of
art as well as an Oriental. Gulbenkian took the
Gainsborough. It was one of the few times anyone acquired a
Duveen without paying a Duveen price for it.
Altogether, Duveen wasn't fortunate in his dealings with
Gulbenkian. He tried hard, but he didn't meet with the
success that favored him in his dealings with his American
clients. Not only that, an effort Duveen made in 1921 to get
a couple of Rembrandts for Gulbenkian led to an acrid
lawsuit in which he found himself in the embarrassing
position of having to testify against one of his best
American clients, Joseph E. Widener, the celebrated horse
and traction man. The paintings, "Portrait of a Gentleman
with a Tall Hat and Gloves" and "Portrait of a Lady with an
Ostrich-Feather Fan," were considered very good Rembrandts.
The Russian Prince Felix Youssoupoff, the slayer of
Rasputin, had inherited them. He left Russia for Paris
rather hurriedly after the Revolution, but he managed to
take the pictures with him. Soon, finding himself in need of
cash, he proposed to Widener, whom he went to see in London,
that he lend Widener the pictures in return for a loan of a
hundred thousand pounds. Widener replied that he was not in
the banking business; he would buy the pictures for a
hundred thousand pounds, but he wouldn't lend a penny on
them. Widener returned to New York, and after some weeks of
negotiating by cables and letters, Youssoupoff signed a
contract in which he agreed to sell Widener the pictures for
a hundred thousand pounds, with the understanding that
Widener would sell them back for the same sum, plus eight
per cent annual interest, if on or before January 1,1924
(and here Youssoupoff was expressing a nostalgia for the
future), a restoration of the old regime in Russia made it
possible for Youssoupoff again "to keep and personally enjoy
these wonderful works of art." Just about this time,
Gulbenkian indicated to Duveen a hankering for Rembrandts.
Duveen took hold of Gulbenkian's wistfulness and turned it
into an avid melancholy. "If you're interested in
Rembrandts," he said, "you've just lost the two best in the
world to Widener. He bought them both for a hundred thousand
pounds, and each of them is worth that." Gulbenkian was
indignant that a man of Rembrandt's talent should sell for
less than he was worth; he was willing to give the artist
his due. News of Gulbenkian's suddenly developed sense of
equity was transmitted to Youssoupoff, who was delighted to
hear that Rembrandt was coming into his own. On the strength
of the two hundred thousand pounds that seemed about to
accrue to the artist, Youssoupoff felt he was in a position
to ask Widener to give his pictures back. This he did.
Widener wanted to know what revolution had taken place that
would enable the Prince to enjoy the pictures again.
Youssoupoff said that it was none of his business. Widener
said that an economic revolution had been stipulated in the
contract, and that if Youssoupoff was going to be so
reticent, he jolly well wasn't going to get the pictures.
Youssoupoff's reply to this was to bring suit against
Widener for the return of the pictures.
This lawsuit, which was heard in the New York Supreme Court
in 1925, was something less than urbane. One of Widener's
lawyers said of Youssoupoff that "any man who paints his
face and blackens his eyes is a joke." Emory S. Buckner, one
of Youssoupoff's lawyers, contended that the Prince had
merely mortgaged the paintings to Widener for a hundred
thousand pounds at eight per cent, and another of the
Prince's lawyers called Widener a "pawnbroker." Clarence J.
Shearn, a third lawyer, declared that Widener was a sharp
trader who had taken in a gentleman. With extraordinary
reserve, he abstained from making even harsher allegations
against Widener. "I could shout 'perjury' from the
housetops," he said. "I could say that Widener is a thief, a
perjurer, and a swindler. This is not necessary. He has
drawn his own picture on the witness stand." Duveen, called
in by the defense as a witness, gave the court a somewhat
different picture of Widener. He testified that Widener had,
in the past few years, bought six hundred thousand dollars'
worth of art from him, and he, Duveen, had told him that the
Widener name on his books was good enough for him. "You can
pay when you want," he had said. Youssoupoff's lawyers,
during their attempt to establish that Widener had taken
advantage of Youssoupoff, countered by putting Duveen on the
stand as a witness for the plaintiff. Duveen testified that
he had once offered the Prince five hundred and fifty
thousand dollars for the two Rembrandts and that the Prince
had wanted a million. At the Prince's price, Duveen said, he
himself could have made only ten per cent on whatever deal
he might have effected. Sometimes, though, he said, he did
sell at a very small profit, sometimes even at a loss. "I
sold some art once to Mr. Widener for three hundred and
fifty thousand dollars, and I sold to him losing the
interest," he said. "That seems to be the usual way with
people who deal with Mr. Widener," Shearn observed. There
was an objection, and he withdrew the remark, but at least
he had had the pleasure of making it. Later in his
testimony, Duveen let it be known that his enthusiasm for
the disputed Rembrandts had diminished; there were better
ones, he said, than the Prince's pair. He mentioned one he
himself had sold to Widener. After all, Youssoupoff's
Rembrandts had never been Duveens.
Other unconventional vignettes were drawn at the trial. The
art dealer Arthur J. Sulley, Widener's London agent, who had
delivered the hundred thousand pounds to Youssoupoff in the
form of two checks—one for forty-five thousand pounds and
one for fifty-five thousand—testified that when the Prince
came to his office to sign the contract and pick up the
checks, he brought along several friends, who kept snatching
at the checks before the contract was signed. Sulley had had
to hold them over his head to keep the friends from grabbing
them, he said. They told him they merely wanted to look at
the checks. When Widener, who had written Youssoupoff asking
him to keep the entire transaction secret, was asked why he
had done that, he testified, "I didn't think it would be a
good thing to have it known publicly that large sums of
money were being spent for works of art at that time. I
thought it might tend to foster a spirit of Bolshevism."
This was one of the many occasions on which the millionaires
of the era demonstrated that they thought it expedient for
their conspicuous consumption to be kept inconspicuous.
Gulbenkian's name was brought into the suit early. Shearn
stated that Gulbenkian, as a beau geste, had advanced
money to Youssoupoff to buy the pictures back and that
Youssoupoff, out of courtesy, had insisted on Gulbenkian's
taking a lien on them. The defense, on the other hand, set
out to prove that Gulbenkian wanted to get hold of the
pictures for himself, not for Youssoupoff, that Youssoupoff
was not trying to put himself in a position "to keep and
personally enjoy" the pictures but simply trying to sell
them for a higher price. The Prince tried to raise the
dispute to a less tawdry plane. On the stand, he made it
clear that he considered Gulbenkian's offer the fiscal
equivalent of a new regime in Russia, and that he felt that
Widener, in his insistence on a return of the Romanovs, was
being technical. He went on to say that he carne of a
Russian family that had been worth half a billion dollars,
and that, despite the Revolution, he owned a summer home in
Geneva worth a hundred and seventy- five thousand dollars
and a house in Paris worth forty-five thousand dollars.
There was also an estate in Brittany worth seven hundred and
fifty thousand dollars; his family had given it to the
French government, but he was expecting to get it back any
minute. Several days later, the Prince took the stand again
and testified that he had forgotten to mention seventy
thousand dollars' worth of jewelry in England and a New York
bank account amounting to $62,250. One of Widener's lawyers
said tartly, "By all this haziness and loss of memory, do
you want to appear to the Court as being very simple?" "I do
not want to appear to the Court," replied the Prince with
manly modesty. "I want only to be myself as I am."
Widener, unnecessarily complicating matters for himself,
mentioned the fact that Youssoupoff not only had signed the
contract but also had sent him a cable confirming the
closing of the deal. When Widener was asked to produce the
cable, he couldn't find it. "I concede that the cable
couldn't be found," Shearn said generously, "because it
appears quite plain that such a cablegram was never sent."
The Interstate Commerce Commission at that time required
that the cable companies keep duplicates of cables for a
year, but after the year was up, the companies destroyed
them. "All anyone would have to do if they were impelled by
a sinister motive," Shearn continued, "would be to wait a
year and then testify as to the contents of a fictitious
cable, the actual sending of which could never be traced,
especially if the plaintiff in such a case were to bring
along a host of retainers and secretaries to swear as to the
contents of such an unproduced cablegram as against the
emphatic denial that such a message was sent from the person
who is alleged to have sent it." Goaded by these remarks,
Widener sent several Pinkerton to Lynnewood Hall, his estate
in Elkins Park, outside Philadelphia, where they ripped
pillowcases open and peered into the secret compartments of
antique escritoires, but the missing cable did not turn up.
Nevertheless, Widener won the case. The Court decided that
his contract with Youssoupoff amounted to a sale, and that
if Gulbenkian were permitted to lend the Prince the money to
buy the pictures back, Gulbenkian would be the man "to keep
and personally enjoy"  them.
A year before Widener's death, the Rembrandts went to the
National Gallery, in Washington, where they now hang. Months
after the suit was over, the missing cablegram fell out of
an old studbook in the Widener living room.
When Duveen was in London, he stayed at Claridge's, and his
suite there, like his accommodations at all points on his
itinerary, was transformed into a small-scale art gallery.
He had infallible taste in decoration—even his detractors
admit that—and he arranged the paintings, sculptures, and
objets d'art he travelled with so
that his clients and friends could visit him in a proper
setting, and possibly take home some of the furnishings. He
was never without a favorite picture (invariably the last
one he had bought), and he kept it beside him on an easel
whenever he dined in his suite and took it along to his
bedroom when he retired. At Claridge's, titled ladies from
all over Europe, and merely rich ones from America, would
drop in to see him. With his long succession of lady
clients—the first one he attracted, when he was fairly
young, was the remarkable Arabella Huntington, the wife of,
consecutively, Collis P. Huntington and his nephew H. E.
Huntington—Duveen seems to have had the relationship
Disraeli had with Queen Victoria; he gave them the exciting
sense of being engaged with him in momentous creative
enterprises. The ladies felt that he and they were
fellow-epicures at the groaning banquet table of culture.
One of Duveen's closest London friends in the days between
the two World Wars was Lord D'Abernon, the British
Ambassador to Germany during the early twenties. Lord
D'Abernon used to describe Duveen as an exhilarating
companion. It was his interesting theory that Duveen's
laugh, which was famous, was a copy of the infectious laugh
of a well-known British architect; Duveen's partiality for
architects started early. Everyone agrees that his
enthusiasm was irrepressible, and that he engaged in a kind
of buffoonery that was irresistible. Most of his friends
were, like D'Abernon, older men, and they enjoyed his
company partly because he made them feel young. Duveen was
even able to rejuvenate some of his pictures. Once, in the
late afternoon, he was standing before a picture he had sold
to Mellon, expatiating enthusiastically on its wonders to
the new owner. A beam from the setting sun suddenly reached
through a window and bathed the picture in a lovely light.
It was the kind of collaboration Duveen expected from all
parts of the universe, animate and inanimate. When his
dithyramb had subsided, Mellon said sadly, "Ah, yes. The
pictures always look better when you are here."
In London, Duveen occasionally, and uncharacteristically,
devoted himself to the artistic tutoring of a non-buyer who
was not even a potential buyer. For a period, with the
tenderness of a master for a pupil whose aesthetic
perceptions were virginal, Duveen piloted Ramsay MacDonald,
then an M.P., around the London galleries. This had the look
of a disinterested favor, and it was one, for MacDonald came
from a social stratum that did not indulge in
picture-buying. But even Duveen's altruism proved to be
profitable. MacDonald became Prime Minister in 1929, and
shortly afterward Duveen was appointed to the board of the
National Gallery, a distinction that had never before been
conferred on an art dealer and that caused a scandal and a
rumpus. Was it decorous for a man on the selling end of art
to be on the buying end of a publicly supported institution?
Neville Chamberlain, who became Prime Minister in 1937,
didn't believe it was, and he revoked the appointment. This
deposition shadowed the last years of Duveen's life.
Earlier, however, MacDonald and Duveen had a good time
sitting next to each other at board meetings of the National
Gallery, and in 1933 the grateful pupil brought Duveen the
apple of the peerage. At a birthday dinner for MacDonald,
given by Duveen at his beautiful house in New York, at
Ninety-first Street and Madison Avenue, a few years before,
the visiting Prime Minister had announced, "I think I know
what Sir Joseph's ambition is. If it's the last act of my
life, I shall get it for him." MacDonald personally
canvassed the heads of all the art museums in England,
asking them to petition the King for Duveen's elevation to
the peerage. Duveen had been knighted in 1919; he had been
made a baronet in 1927; and now, in 1933, he was made a
baron. Very often, Englishmen elevated to the peerage have
commemorated their home town in their titles, as Disraeli
did Beaconsfield. But Duveen, who had no settled home for a
long time except for the house on Madison Avenue, chose to
commemorate the section of London known as Millbank, because
that is where the Tate Gallery, to which he had made
numerous gifts, is situated. So he became Lord Duveen of
Millbank.
Each time Duveen arrived in New York from London, there were
fanfares of publicity for him and his most recent fabulous
purchases. The "Twenty Years Ago Today" column of the
Herald Tribune, which provides a capsule immortality for
those judicious enough to have exerted themselves two
decades before, has been studded for some time now with
Duveen tidbits, such as:
February 19, 1926.
Sir Joseph Duveen, the art dealer, has bought the
Wachtmeister Rembrandt for $410,000, one of the highest
prices ever paid for a Rembrandt, and is bringing it to
New York. The painting, which is called "Portrait of a
Young Man," was sold by Count Carl Wachtmeister and it
has been in the possession of his family for 200 years.
July 18, 1927.
Sir Joseph Duveen, international art dealer, bought in
London yesterday the entire collection of 120 Italian
old masters belonging to Robert H. Benson. It will be
brought intact to New York. The purchase price was
$3,000,000.
January 7, 1929.
LONDON:
Andrew W. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury of the
United States, has purchased [from Duveen] for $970,000
Raphael's "Madonna," known as the "Cowper Madonna." The
painting bears Raphael's signature and the date "1508."
Once, Duveen brought hack Gainsborough's "The Blue Boy,"
which he had already sold, in Paris, to Mr. and Mrs. H. E.
Huntington; another time, he brought back Lawrence's
"Pinkie," the portrait of a girl who sat for Lawrence when
she was twelve, in the last year of her life, and whose
brother became the father of Elizabeth Barrett. There were
tearful farewells for both these eminent children when they
left their native heath, and jubilant welcomes when they
arrived in their adopted land. The circumstances attending
Duveen's purchase of "Pinkie," in 1926, illustrate his
tenacity in the fight he made to establish his preeminence
among the art dealers of the world. His chief rival in this
country was the venerable firm of Knoedler. When Duveen was
starting out, Knoedler had arrangements with Mellon and
several other big collectors to make all their art purchases
for them, on a fixed commission. From the beginning, Duveen
felt that his educational mission was two-fold—to teach
millionaire American collectors what the great works of art
were, and to teach them that they could get those works of
art only through him. To establish this sine qua non
required considerable daring and a lot of money. When it was
announced that "Pinkie" was to be sold at auction at
Christie's, in London, a partner in Knoedler's came to
Duveen, who was then in London himself, with the suggestion
that they buy it jointly. Knoedler's, he said, had a client
he was sure would take it. Duveen suspected that the motive
for this friendly overture was to keep him from forcing the
price up for the prospective buyer, and he politely
declined. The Knoedler man said that no one could outbid his
client. Duveen said that no one could keep him from buying
"Pinkie." On the eve of the sale, Duveen went to Paris,
leaving behind him an unlimited bid with the manager of
Christie's. In Paris, he awaited the result, with increasing
nervousness. On the day of the sale, he informed his friends
that he was buying a great picture, that he had once sold it
himself for a hundred thousand dollars, and that, as a rich
bidder was interested, the price might go to two hundred
thousand. That evening, he learned that he had paid three
hundred and seventy-seven thousand dollars for "Pinkie."
When he recovered from the shock, he brought the young lady
to New York and gave her a lavish reception at his Ministry
of Marine. While she was being ogled by an invited throng,
Duveen telephoned Mellon, in Washington (he had known all
along who his rival's rich client was), and offered her to
him for adoption. Mellon said that he had indeed been trying
to get her but that Duveen had paid an outrageous price for
her and he wasn't interested. Duveen admitted that the price
he had paid was steep, but he repeated his cardinal dictum:
"When you pay high for the priceless, you're getting it
cheap." Another saying of his, endlessly repeated to his
American clients, was "You can get all the pictures you want
at fifty thousand dollars apiece—that's easy. But to get
pictures at a quarter of a million apiece—that wants doing!"
Duveen now repeated this to Mellon, too. Mellon, having
heard all this before, was still not interested. Duveen then
told Mellon that "Pinkie" was being offered to him as a
courtesy, because a man of his taste was worthy of her, but
that if he thought her price too high, it was all right,
because he had another prospective purchaser. Mellon was
skeptical, and he was still not interested. The next
morning, Duveen telephoned H. E. Huntington, at San Marino,
the Huntington mansion near Pasadena. The mansion is today a
public art gallery and library, and there "Pinkie" now
hangs.
This demonstration to Mellon of the sine-qua-non
principle was worth all Duveen's trouble. Mellon did not
make the same mistake again. When, shortly afterward, the
Romney "Portrait of Mrs. Davenport" was put up for auction
at Christie's, Knoedler's once more suggested to Duveen that
he go shares with them, and once more Duveen refused. To get
revenge, Knoedler's kept bidding until the picture cost
Duveen over three hundred thousand dollars, the highest
price ever paid for a Romney. Duveen was less vindictive
than they were; despite Mellon's earlier lapse, Duveen
offered him the Romney, and Mellon immediately bought it.
In his five decades of selling in this country, Duveen, by
amazing energy and audacity, transformed the American taste
in art. The masterpieces he brought here have fetched up in
a number of museums that, simply because they contain these
masterpieces, rank among the greatest in the world. He not
only educated the small group of collectors who were his
clients but created a public for the finest works of the
masters of painting. "Twenty-five years from now," Lincoln
Kirstein wrote in the New Republic in 1949, "art
historians . . . may investigate the ledgers of Duveen, as
today they do the Medici." The phenomenon of Duveen was
without precedent. In the eighteenth century, Englishmen
making the Grand Tour bought either from the heads of
impoverished families or directly from the artists, as,
three hundred years before, Francis I bought from Leonardo
da Vinci. Generally speaking, the nineteenth-century
collectors of all nations operated on the same basis. There
had never before been anyone like Duveen, the exalted
middleman, and he practically monopolized his field.
Ninety-five of the hundred and fifteen pictures, exclusive
of American portraits, in the Mellon Collection, which is
now in the National Gallery, in Washington, came to Mellon
through Duveen. Of the seven hundred paintings in the Kress
Collection, also in the National Gallery, more than a
hundred and fifty were supplied by him, and these are the
finest. It has been stated by the eminent American art
scholar Dr. Alfred M. Frankfurter that except for the
English collections that were put together in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, this country has the largest
aggregation of Italian pictures outside Italy. Of these,
according to Dr. Frankfurter, seventy-five per cent of the
best came here through Duveen.
When the twentieth century began, the American millionaires
were collecting mainly Barbizon, or "sweet French" pictures,
and English "story" pictures. They owned the originals of
the Rosa Bonheur prints that one can remember from the
parlors of one's youth—pastoral scenes, with groups of
morose cattle. Those pictures are now consigned to the
basements of the few big private houses that still exist or
the basements of museums that no longer have the effrontery
to hang them. Troyons, Ziems, Meissoniers, Bouguereaus,
Fromentins, and Henners crowded the interstices of the
mother-of-pearl grandeur of the living rooms of the American
rich, and their owners dickered among themselves for them.
When Charles Yerkes, the Chicago traction magnate, died in
1905, Frederick Lewis Allen says in "The Lords of Creation,"
"his canvas by Troyon, 'Coming from the Market,' had already
appreciated forty thousand dollars in value since its
purchase." Duveen changed all that. He made the Barbizons
practically worthless by beguiling their luckless owners
into a longing to possess earlier masterpieces, which he had
begun buying before most of his American clients had so much
as heard the artists' names. Duveen made the names familiar,
and compelled a reverence for them because he extracted such
overwhelming prices for them. Of the Barbizon school, only
Corot and Millet now have any financial rating, and that has
greatly declined. A Corot that in its day brought fifty
thousand dollars can be bought now for ten or fifteen
thousand, and Millet is even worse off.
Although the French painter Bouguereau represented the kind
of art that Duveen was eager to displace, he was flexible
enough to make use of him in order to bring the education of
the Duveen clientele up to his level. A highly visible nude
by the French master was used by Duveen as an infinitely
renewable bait to bring the customers who successively owned
it sensibly to rest in the fields in which Duveen
specialized. This Bouguereau travelled to and from Duveen's,
serving—a silent emissary—to start many collections. Clients
enrolled in Duveen's course of study would buy the
Bouguereau, stare at it for some time, get faintly tired of
it, and then, as they heard of rarer and subtler and more
expensive works, grow rather ashamed of it. They would send
it back, and Duveen would replace it with something a little
more refined. Back and forth the Bouguereau went. Sometimes,
Duveen amused himself by using it for a different purpose—to
cure potential customers who had succumbed to the virus of
the ultramodern. Some collectors who had started with
painters like Picasso and Braque grew hungry for a
flesh-and-blood curve after a while, and presently found
themselves with the travelling Bouguereau. Duveen sent it to
them for a breather, and afterward they went the way of the
group that had started with the Bouguereau.
Duveen has been called by one of his friends "a lovable
buccaneer." Whether he was or not, he forced American
collectors to accumulate great things, infused them with a
fierce pride in collecting, and finally got their
collections into museums, making it possible for the
American people to see a large share of the world's most
beautiful art without having to go abroad. He did it by
dazzling the collectors with visions of an Elysium through
which they would stroll hand in hand with the illustrious
artists of the past, and by making other dealers emulate
him. His rivals could no longer sell their old line of
goods, and the result was that he elevated their taste as
well as that of his customers. An eminent English art dealer
whose family has been in the business for five generations
and who could never endure Duveen says, nevertheless, that
with Duveen's death an enormously vital force went out of
the trade. The dealers are still living off the collectors
he made, or off their descendants. Duveen had a cavalier
attitude toward prospective clients, and there was a certain
majesty about it. He ignored Detroit for years after it
became rich. Then its newly made millionaires came to him,
and they were delighted to be asked to dine at Lord Duveen's.
Once, when he was told that Edsel Ford was buying pictures,
and was asked why he didn't pay some attention to him, he
said, "He's not ready for me yet. Let him go on buying.
Someday he'll be big enough for me."
When Duveen entered the American art market, he was barging
into a narrow field and one that was dominated by
long-established dealers. Duveen not only barged into this
field but soon preempted it, although, for the most part,
his American clients didn't especially care for him. "Why
should they like me?" he once asked one of his attorneys
rhetorically. "I am an outsider. Why do they trade with me?
Because they've got to. Because I've got what they can't get
anywhere else." The daughter of one client, who competed
with Duveen in a long contest for her widowed father's
attention and ultimately lost out, tells, in a voice still
weary with frustration, how Duveen managed to elude her even
when she was sure she had him in a corner. Once, her father
had asked several friends to their home to inspect some of
his latest acquisitions from Duveen. Among the guests, in
addition to Duveen himself, was a distinguished art
connoisseur. She showed the connoisseur, a French count,
around the gallery in which her father housed his collection
of paintings. The count was full of admiration for them
until he came to a Dürer
that Duveen had sold her father for four hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. Then the expert's face darkened. His
hostess urged him to explain what was bothering him. He
looked around, spotted his host and Duveen at a distance,
and whispered, "I'm terribly sorry, but I don't think this Dürer
is the real thing." To his horror, his companion
triumphantly summoned her father and Duveen. "Count X—
thinks that this Dürer
is not genuine!" she cried as they approached. The host
turned a stricken countenance to Duveen. Duveen's famous
laugh pealed out. "Now, isn't that amusing?" he said to his
client. "That's really very amusing indeed. Do you know, my
dear fellow, that some of the greatest experts in the world,
some of the very greatest experts in the world, actually
think that this Dürer
is not genuine?" Duveen had reversed the normal order of
things. Somehow, the expert who was present, as well as all
the experts who were not present, became reduced in rank,
discredited, pulverized to fatuousness.
On another occasion, the beleaguered daughter, with Duveen
and her father, was inspecting a house that Duveen had
chosen for them, and that they eventually bought. She said
it was too big—it had eighteen servant's rooms and running
it would be a terrible chore for her. "But Joe thinks it's
beautiful," her father said. A few days later, the three of
them, now accompanied by Duveen's aide Boggis, were looking
at the house again. Duveen enlarged on its potentialities,
then abruptly looked at his watch. "No more time today," he
said, firmly but not unkindly. "What about tomorrow, Joe?"
the humble millionaire wanted to know. Again Duveen's famous
laugh rang out. He turned to Boggis. "What am I doing
tomorrow, Boggis?" he asked. Boggis knew. "Tomorrow, Lord
Duveen, you have an appointment in Washington with Mr.
Mellon," he said. Against this there was no argument. The
client automatically accepted his lesser place in the Duveen
hierarchy, grateful for the blessings he had received that
day.
Sir Osbert Sitwell has an interesting theory about
Duveen—that he was a master exploiter of his own gaffes.
He expounds it in one volume of his memoirs, "Left Hand,
Right Hand!":
Since the following anecdote often appears in the press,
I had better recount it myself, correctly. In later
years, and especially in 1926, when I visited New York,
I used to see a certain amount of Lord—then Sir
Joseph—Duveen, and several times went to his house
there. The following summer I met him at the opening day
of some exhibition in the Leicester Galleries, and he
rushed up to me, and said, "Oh, my dear Mr. Lytton
Strachey, I am so glad to see you again."
Lytton and I were not much alike, for I was tall, fair,
clean-shaven, and certainly by no means thin, whereas he
was bone-thin and angular, as well as tall, and bearded,
with something of the reflective air of a pelican. In
fact, no two people could have resembled each other
less. Consequently, I telegraphed to him: "Delighted to
inform you that I have this morning been mistaken for
you by Sir Joseph Duveen. Osbert." Lytton telegraphed
back: "One can only say again how utterly duveen.
Lytton." [The "again" was a reference to a celebrated
remark made by the late Belle da Costa Greene, director
of the Pierpont Morgan Library, when she was first shown
through the art collection in Jules Bache's Fifth Avenue
house: "How utterly duveen!"] Sir Joseph, with his
expert amiability, which resembled that of a clownish
tumbler on the music-hall stage, heard of these
telegrams and subsequently always referred to them at
some moment of any luncheon or dinner party at which he
and I happened both to be present, appealing to me to
"tell the story about Strachey." Being a remarkably
astute man in most directions, I think that, in this
different from most people, he enjoyed having the stupid
side of his character emphasized; it constituted a
disguise for his cleverness, a kind of fancy dress. . .
. After the story had been related, he used to add,
"Of course I knew Osbert Sitwell. I love his books.
He's written about my country." At first this
statement rather surprised me, until I comprehended that
by it he meant Scarborough and the district round, which
are said to figure in my novel "Before the Bombardment."
Sir Osbert's surprise at Duveen's reference to his "country"
was due to the fact that Duveen was so seldom in England.
Indeed, he was sometimes assumed to be an American, he was
here so much. (It was only in America that he was always
taken for an Englishman.) To counteract this notion, Duveen,
who was actually a native of Yorkshire, bought a country
home in Kent. He rarely visited it, however. In his New
York gallery, Duveen was a stickler for keeping up the
correct English tone. The members of his staff, in the words
of a former associate, were invariably "dressed like
Englishmen—cutaways and striped trousers." The censorship of
the staff was linguistic as well as sartorial. You could
drop an "h" there with impunity, but under no circumstances
pick up an Americanism. One day, a Duveen employee, throwing
caution to the winds, said, "O.K." Duveen was severe. This
was unbecoming in an English establishment, a colonial
branch of the House of Lords, engaged in the business of
purveying Duveens. After that, Duveen was yessed in English.
Duveen looked like a conservative English businessman. He
was of middle height, stocky build, and ruddy, almost
apoplectic coloring. He had clear, penetrating gray eyes and
a cropped mustache. He exuded opulence. He sometimes played
golf or went to the theatre, but only halfheartedly; he was
interested in practically nothing except his business. He
never carried more than a little cash; money in small
amounts was something he didn't understand. His valet
decided what he would need for incidentals and provided him
with it. When he dressed Duveen, he would put in his pocket
a few bills to enable him to get about. Once, when the valet
was ill, Duveen said that he, too, would have to take
to his bed, because there was no one to give him cash for
taxi fare. Duveen was meek toward his valet, but in general
he was imperious. He had the Oriental habit of clapping his
hands when he wanted people; an acquaintance who visited the
British Museum with him recalls that Duveen clapped his
hands even in that august institution, and that the
attendants, came running. After becoming a peer, he was
proud of being a member of the House of Lords and would
occasionally drop in there, to prove that he could. Politics
meant little to him, but when he wanted to terminate an
interview, he would suddenly remember that he had a
political side. "Sorry, old man, but I've got to go to the
Lords," he would say. "Important measure coming up." Like
some of his clients, he seldom read anything. (It has been
suggested that a number of his American clients gobbled up
his wares with such avidity because they could thus indulge
in expensive contemplation without making the painful effort
of reading.) But if a book said something about a picture
Duveen was interested in, he was eager to see it. His
impetuosity was sometimes extreme. Once, when the custodian
of an immensely valuable collection of books on art he kept
in the Ministry of Marine brought him a rare volume he
wanted, he seized it and tore out of it the pages he was
after, to free himself from the encumbrance of irrelevant
text.
The favored art critics who were permitted to use Duveen's
library say that in his time it was in some respects
superior to the Metropolitan's and Frick's. One critic,
looking up an item in another rare volume, found an irate
crisscross of pencil marks over the passage he was after,
and, scribbled in the margin, the words "Nonsense! It's by
Donatello!" Shocked by this vandalism, he took the book to
the librarian, who said calmly, "Oh, Joe's been at it
again." Duveen's habit of editing by mutilation impaired the
pleasure of students using the library. To books that
weren't in his library Duveen was flamboyantly indifferent.
Once, on the witness stand, opposing counsel asked him if he
was familiar with Ruskin's "The Stones of Venice." "Of
course I've heard of the picture, but I've never actually
seen it," he answered. When his error was later pointed out
to him, he laughed and said he'd always thought
Ruskin was a painter, and not a very good one, at that.
Duveen was more interested in the theatre than books. His
favorite play, which he thought illustrated a great moral
lesson, was an English comedy, "A Pair of Spectacles,"
adapted from the French by Sydney Grundy, and first produced
in London in 1890. It was about a kindly and gentle man who
gets into all sorts of trouble because, as he starts out
from his house one morning, he picks up the wrong pair of
spectacles, and thereafter finds himself becoming mean and
distrustful. Duveen said that this play showed how necessary
it was to look at life through the right glasses, and that
it was his function to furnish his clients with the right
glasses for looking at works of art. He joked about it, but
he believed it. At the theatre, his appreciation of a funny
line was sometimes given audible expression five minutes
after the rest of the audience had got the point. He didn't
mind at all impersonating the guileless and traditional
British Blimp; speaking of himself, he often repeated the
formula for giving an Englishman a happy old age: tell him a
joke in his youth. He had a fondness for basic humor. A
friend, chiding him about his persistent litigiousness, made
the mistake of telling a "darky" story—the one about the
colored man arrested for stealing chickens who, when
confronted by irrefutable evidence, said to the magistrate,
"If it's all the same to you, Jedge, let's forget the whole
business!" Duveen made the friend repeat it whenever they
met. Perhaps, in the steam bath of litigation in which
Duveen was immersed all his life, the number of occasions on
which his own attitude toward the judge approximated the
colored man's made him such an enthusiastic audience for
this story.
Certain men are endowed with the faculty of concentrating on
their own affairs to the exclusion of what is going on
elsewhere in the cosmos. Duveen was that kind of man, and
the kind of man who, if he met you out walking, would take
you along with him, no matter where you were bound or how
urgent it was for you to get there. One day, walking along
Central Park West, he ran into the art dealer Felix
Wildenstein, who was going the other way, bent on what was,
to him, an important errand. Duveen, with his infectious
friendliness, linked his arm through Wildenstein's and
suggested that they go for a walk in the Park. Wildenstein
explained that he was hurrying to keep an appointment, but
they were presently walking in the Park. Duveen turned the
conversation to queries and interesting speculations about
his own personality, in which he took a detached but lively
interest. "What do people think about me:" he asked. "What
are they saying about me?" Wildenstein quoted a slightly
derogatory opinion a friend had expressed; he had to have
some revenge for being so abruptly swept off his course.
Duveen was not upset by the derogatory opinion. "That's all
right," he said, as if a favorable opinion would have
upset him, "but does he think I am a great man?"
Duveen's New York home was filled with rare and Lovely
things. To an illustrious Englishman invited to a dinner
party there, Duveen said, as they sat down, "For you, I'm
bringing out the Sèvres!"
During dinner, the Englishman overheard Duveen say to
another guest, "How do you like this Sèvres?
Haven't used it since Ramsay MacDonald dined here." Duveen
seemed to make a point of showing his multimillionaire
clients that he lived better than they did. Over a period of
many years, he dined once a week at Frick's house when he
was in New York. One evening, he remarked to his host that
the silverware at the table was not quite in keeping with
the many Duveen items in the house. Frick asked Duveen what
he should have. The work of the greatest of English
silversmiths, Duveen replied, and explained that this master
was Paul De Lamerie, who had practiced his craft in the
eighteenth century; each of De Lamerie's creations was a
museum piece, and Frick ought to have only De Lamerie silver
in his home. Frick asked his uncompromising guest if he
could supply a De Lamerie service. It wouldn't be easy, said
Duveen, and it would take time, but he would be willing to
accept the commission. After some years, he succeeded in
making it possible for Frick to invite him to dinner with a
feeling of perfect security.
Duveen's clients, as their friendship with him ripened, saw
their homes become almost as exquisite as his. A new house
that Frick built in 1913 at Seventieth Street and Fifth
Avenue was, in the end, thanks to Duveen's choice of its
architect and decoration, a jewel of such loveliness that
Duveen could have lived in it himself. Duveen chose the firm
of Carrère & Hastings as the architects, and his friend the
late Sir Charles Allom, who had been knighted by King George
V for doing his place, as the decorator. The
collaboration between Duveen and Allom was comprehensive;
Duveen indicated to Allom what precious objects he had in
mind for the house and Allom devised places in which to put
them. It was Duveen who supplied the paintings for the
magnificent Fragonard and Boucher Rooms, to mention only the
most famous of the pleasances that have attracted many
visitors to the house, now the Frick Museum. By the time it
was done, the place was beautiful, and Duveen, when he went
to dinner for the first time, was—except when he
contemplated the silverware, which hadn't yet been
replaced—thoroughly at ease.
On one occasion, Duveen found it necessary to subject Frick
to the same kind of benevolent but firm discipline to which
he later subjected Mellon; that is, to teach him that no
great picture was to be obtained except through Duveen. At
dinner on a night in 1916, Duveen noticed in his host an air
at once abstracted and expectant. Duveen was adept at
following the nuances of his clients' moods, reaching out
antennae to probe their hidden thoughts. He knew there was
something in the wind, because Frick, always laconic, on
this occasion faded out completely. He finally drew from his
client and host the fact that he was on the trail of a
really great picture, the name of which he refused to
disclose. Duveen went home and pondered. To allow Frick to
buy a great picture through anyone else was unthinkable. He
cabled his office in London and inquired whether anybody
there knew of an outstanding picture that was for sale.
Through the underground of the trade, Duveen found out in a
few days that Sir Audley Dallas Neeld, whose home,
Grittleton House, was in Wiltshire, was about to sell
Gainsborough's "Mall in St. James's Park" to Knoedler's.
Obviously, this was the picture Frick had in mind.
Knoedler's had an even bigger in with Frick than it had with
Mellon; Charles Carstairs, one of the heads of Knoedler's
and a man of great charm, was an intimate friend of Frick's.
Duveen immediately cabled his English agent exact
instructions. He believed that Knoedler's man, sure the
Gainsborough was in the bag, would be in no hurry to
consummate the deal. Duveen told his agent to take the first
train next morning to Wiltshire, tell Sir Audley that he was
prepared to outbid everyone else for the picture, and offer
him a binder of a thousand pounds to prove it. Duveen got
the Gainsborough for three hundred thousand dollars. The
next time he dined with Frick, he found his host depressed.
"I've lost that picture," Frick told Duveen. "I was on the
trail of a very great painting—Gainsborough's 'Mall in St.
James's Park.'" "Why, Mr. Frick," Duveen said, "I bought
that picture. When you want a great picture, you must come
to me, because, you know, I get the first chance at all of
them. You shall have the Gainsborough. Moreover, you shall
have it for exactly what I paid for it." In the first joy of
acquisition, Frick was ecstatically grateful, not stopping
to think that Sir Audley would probably have sold the
picture to Knoedler's for so much less that Knoedler's price
with a profit would have been lower than Duveen's without
one. Duveen charged the lost profit off to pedagogy. When he
brought the Gainsborough to Frick, he pointed to it
triumphantly and laughed his infectious laugh. "Now, Mr.
Frick," he said magnanimously, "you can send it to
Knoedler's to be framed."
(This is the first of a series of articles on Lord
Duveen.) |
