Meryle Secrest, biographer of Kenneth Clark ("Riveting . . .
enthralling" -"Wall Street Journal) and Bernard Berenson ("A
remarkable tour de force"-Sir Harold Acton), brings all her
exceptional gifts to the story of Lord Duveen of Millbank. Her book
is the first major biography in more than fifty years of the
supreme international art dealer of the twentieth century and the
first to make use of the enormous Duveen archive that spans a
century and has, until recently, been kept under lock and key at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The story begins with Duveen pere, a Dutch Jew immigrating to
Britain in 1866, establishing a business in London, going from
humble beginnings in an antiques shop to a knighthood celebrating
him as one of the country's leading art dealers. Duveen pere could
discern an Old Master beneath layers of discolored varnish. He
perfected the chase, the subterfuges, the strategies, the double
dealings. He had an uncanny ability to spot a hidden treasure. It
was called "the Duveen eye." His son, Joseph, grew up with it and
learned it all-and more . . .
Secrest tells us how the young Duveen was motivated from the
beginning by the thrill of discovery; how he ascended, at
twenty-nine, to (de facto) head of the business; how he moved away
from the firm's emphasis on tapestries and Chinese porcelains
toward the more speculative, more lucrative, more exciting business
of dealing in Old Masters. We see a demand for these paintings
growing in America, fueled by the new "squillionaires" just at the
moment when British aristocrats with great art collections were
losing their fortunes . . . how Duveen's whole career was based on
the simple observation: Europe has the art; America, the money.
Secrest shows how he sold hundreds of masterpieces by Bellini,
Botticelli, Giotto, Raphael, Rembrandt, Gainsborough, Watteau,
Velazquez, Vermeer, and Titian, among others, by convincing such
self-made Americans as Morgan, Frick, Huntington, Widener, Bache,
Mellon, and Kress that ownership of great art would ennoble them,
and while waving such huge sums at the already noble British owners
that the art changed hands and all were happy.
We discover Duveen's connection to Buckingham Palace: how when the
Prince of Wales became Edward VII his first act was to call in
Duveen Brothers as decorators (something had to be done with the
lugubrious Victorian decor and ghastly tartan hangings); how Duveen
supplied the tapestries and rugs for the coronation ceremonies in
Westminster Abbey; and how, in 1933, he became Lord Duveen of
Millbank. We learn about the controversies in which he became
embroiled and about his legendary art espionage (a network of hotel
employees spied on his clients to discover their tastes).
Duveen was as generous as he was acquisitive, giving away hundreds
of thousands of pounds to British institutions (the Tate Gallery,
the National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum-including rooms
to house the Elgin Marbles), organizing exhibitions for young
artists, writing books about British art, and playing a major role
in the design of the National Gallery in Washington.
Meryle Secrest's "Duveen fascinates as it contributes to our
understanding of art as commerce and our grasp of American and
English taste in the grand manner.
As Andrew Mellon once said, paintings never looked as good as they
did when Duveen was standing in front of them.
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