Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1869 Hull, England

Died: 1939 London, England

Other name/s: Lord Duveen of Millbank, Baron Duveen

Biography

Art dealer and benefactor Joseph Duveen (later Lord Duveen of Millbank), son of prominent Jewish art dealer Joseph Duveen, was born in Hull, England on 14 October 1869. His father had moved to Hull from the Netherlands in 1865. Duveen was educated privately and at the age of 17 he joined his father's business, which by then had branches in London, New York and Paris. He became director of the firm in 1900, taking over the New York office and adding Old Master paintings to the firm's areas of trade. His business acumen and promotional skills soon made him one of the world's leading art dealers. Although, according to some authorities, ‘Duveen’s knowledge of art was conspicuously exceeded by his enthusiasm for it’, he was considered by most of his wealthy American clients ‘as little less than omniscient’ (Behrman 1951). In 1912, Duveen hired the renowned American-Jewish art historian Bernard Berenson to personally authenticate Renaissance artworks, thereby significantly increasing their value. However, this collaboration was considered controversial by some, and the fact that Berenson was given a percentage of Duveen’s sales compromised the art historian’s reputation (Green 2018). Many important paintings passed through Duveen's hands and he purchased works from aristocratic collections in Britain and Europe to sell to wealthy American clients. In 1921 he acquired Thomas Gainsborough's portrait of Jonathan Buttall, The Blue Boy, from the Duke of Westminster and sold it to the Huntingtons in California (it is now in the Huntington Library Collection). At the time, The Blue Boy was one of the most famous paintings in the world. After its sale was made public, it went on view for three weeks at the National Gallery, lines stretching through Trafalgar Square as 90,000 people came to see it. There were even demonstrations in the streets protesting at its sale. At $728,000 (over $10 million today), it was the most expensive painting ever sold (Ludel 2019).

In 1928 Duveen paid for a new gallery at the British Museum to house the Parthenon, or Elgin, Marbles. The new gallery eventually cost over £100,000 and took ten years to complete. In 1937 Duveen bought Giorgione's Adoration of the Shepherds from Lord Allendale, now at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA. Duveen, who turned to philanthropy ‘as a means of consolidating his position among the nation's elite’, donated William Hogarth's The Graham Children and Correggio's Christ Taking Leave of his Mother to the National Gallery, and John Singer Sargent's Study of Mme Gautreau and Augustus John's Study for Madame Suggia to the Tate Gallery, London (Kehoe 2004, p. 505). He also financed several galleries at the Tate to house contemporary non-British paintings, one devoted to the work of Sargent, and in 1937 a new building comprising three large and two smaller galleries for contemporary sculpture. Furthermore, in 1932 he presented a gallery for early Italian paintings to the National Gallery and in 1933 he paid for an extension to the National Portrait Gallery. He paid for the decorations at the Wallace Collection and for Rex Whistler's mural decorations at the Tate, and was a generous contributor to the National Art Collections Fund (NACF, now the Art Fund). Duveen founded, financed, and organised the British Artists' Exhibitions Organisation for the encouragement of lesser-known British artists, and in 1931 he endowed a Chair for the History of Art at London University. He was a trustee of the Wallace Collection (from 1925), the National Gallery (1929–36), and the National Portrait Gallery (from 1933). He was a honorary member of the council of the NACF and of the council of the British School at Rome.

Duveen was made a baronet in 1927, and raised to the peerage as Baron Duveen of Millbank, commemorating his long association with the Tate Gallery (located on Millbank) in 1933. When in 1939 he sold the Elgin Marbles to the British Museum, he insisted that the once-colourful marbles should be scrubbed clean to their pristine whiteness before their installation in the Duveen Gallery, which caused the loss of all of their colour and much of their detail. In May 1939 Duveen came to London for the official opening of the Marbles at the British Museum, but under the weight of the controversy surrounding their cleaning, the ceremony was cancelled. Duveen died few days later of a cerebral haemorrhage at Claridge's Hotel, London, England on 25 May 1939. After his death, Armand Lowengard (Joseph Duveen's nephew) and Edward Fowles became joint owners of the family firm. When Lowengard died in 1943, Fowles assumed the presidency of Duveen Brothers. The Nazi occupation of France forced Duveen Brothers to evacuate Paris and the London office closed shortly thereafter. Although after the war Duveen Brothers had a number of notable clients, including Henry Ford II and Robert Lehman, the firm never regained its former prominence.

Related books

Charlotte Vignon, Duveen Brothers and the Market for Decorative Arts, 1880-1940 (New York: The Frick Collection, 2019)
Rachel Cohen, 'The Picture Trade: Joseph Duveen, Belle Greene, Edith Wharton', in Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. 157-197
Nicholas Penny and Karen Serres, 'Duveen's French Frames for British Pictures', The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 151, No. 1275, June 2009, pp. 388-394
Nicholas Penny and Karen Serres, 'Duveen and the Decorators', The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 149, No. 1251, June 2007, pp. 400-406
Meryle Secrest, Duveen: A Life in Art (New York: Knopf, 2004)
Elisabeth Kehoe, 'Working Hard at Giving it Away: Lord Duveen, the British Museum and the Elgin Marbles', Historical Research, Vol. 77, No. 198, Nov. 2004, pp. 503-519
Colin Simpson, The Partnership: The Secret Association of Bernard Berenson and Joseph Duveen (London: Bodley Head, 1987)
Edward Fowles, Memoirs of Duveen Brothers (London: Times Books, 1976)
J. H. Duveen, The Rise of the House of Duveen (London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1957)
Samuel Nathaniel Behrman, Duveen: The Intimate Portrait of a Fabulous Art Dealer (New York: Random House, 1952)
James Henry Duveen, Secrets of an Art Dealer (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1938)
James Henry Duveen, Collection and Recollections: a Century and a Half of Art Deals (London: Jarrolds, 1935)
‘Sir Joseph Duveen And British Art’, The Observer, 26 February 1928, p. 9
Paul George Konody, ‘Art and Artists: Sir Joseph Duveen's Scheme’, The Observer, 30 January 1927, p. 12

Related organisations

British Artists' Exhibitions Organisation (founder, organiser, funder)
Duveen Brothers Ltd (director)
National Art Collections Fund (honorary member)
National Gallery (trustee)
National Portrait Gallery (trustee)
Tate Gallery (benefactor)
Wallace Collection, London (trustee)

Selected exhibitions

Lord Duveen, My Pictures Never Look So Marvellous as When you Are Here, Lévy Gorvy, London (2018)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Joseph Duveen]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Joseph Duveen collector