Customer Reviews

Duveen: A Life in Art

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The sub-title of this book, 'A Life in Art' is absolutely true, but almost misleading. Quite a number of books with something like that in their name deal with the life of an artist. This one, instead, deals with the life of Joseph Duveen, art dealer.

Joseph Duveen lived at a time when the established order was changing. He made an early observation that while Europe had the art, America had the money. As head of Duveen Brothers (London, Paris, New York) he set up an organization finding hundreds of the Old Masters in Europe and selling them to American collecters. The list of his customers reads like a Who's Who of the American rich: Mellon, Frick, J. P. Morgan, Huntington, Kress, Hearst and many, many more.

The book is largely based on the Duveen Archive. Held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the archive was locked away and hidden. Only recently has the archive been transferred to the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities in Los Angeles. There a decision was made to make the archive available on microfilm for study. The archive consists of the documentation that accompanied the business: letters, cables, photo albums, ledgers, sales books, stock books, etc. These kinds of documents are the life blood of a business and in this case enable the author to have unparalleled insight to how the business operated. This is combined with a knac for story telling that makes the dead business documents come alive.

This is the story of Joseph Duveen, the man responsible for building the most famous private collections (later museums) in the U.S. As a dealer, he was the first to fully understand that art travels where money lives, which is to say from Europe to America.
There are many lively anecdotes recalling his relationship with Morgan, Mellon, Altman, Widener and, most of all, the diabolical Berenson (thanks to new material that surfaced recently, the confidential contract between the expert and the dealer is very well described in the book). It is true that this book is not entirely satisfactory because it is somewhat confuse and too anecdotical, but the main character is so fascinating that it still makes for good reading.

I held great hopes for this book--Duveen has long been of interest to me because of the pivotal role he played in the creation of some of the greatest art collections in this country. However, Secrest in her drive to capture the "essence" of the man has so mangled the story of his life and career that reading her work is more chore than delight. To say the book is disorganized is to deal in serious understatement. But worse than that are the inaccuracies, especially when she writes about Duveen's customers. Just for starters, apparently she didn't recognize the need to differentiate between John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and his father (or maybe she didn't know there has been more than one JDR!). You won't learn much from this tome that you don't know to begin, and getting through it will be a struggle.

Describing a new group of Duveen clients --in page 286 of her book-- Meryle Secrest includes "the future governor of New York John D. Rockefeller Jr." Of course the future governor was not the noted philanthropist John Jr. but his third child Nelson, not a minor figure for a historian to misplace since he was he was also the vice president of the nation from 1974 to 1977. Even without the deep connections of the Rockefellers to the art world, very few of the potential readers for Secrest book on Joseph Duveen will fail to notice Secrest unfortunate slip.

Not a reasoned book for the art lover, lacking for instance an effective valuation of the works of art traded, the author excels in anecdotal information about the nature and personality of collectors and dealers. The problem is that the main reason to read this book is to learn specific data about why America's amazing museum holdings in old master paintings came to be, and about the people that made it possible. Lots of that information is in the book, and this is still the reason to read it. A Slip such as Nelson's, when the reader is entering a rarified territory and needs to establish trust in the accuracy of the author, is very problematic.

Problems aside, if the reader's interest emerges from the art itself, this is not one of the first books to read on the issues around America's old master collections. Ultimately, however, it is an indispensable addition to go to, if one wants to get a rounded understanding of American collections of paintings.

I completely agree with the other reviews who found this biography a disappointment. With the author's background in biographies of other art-related individuals and the ability to review the Duveen archives, it is quite surprising that this book is so disorganized and ultimately uninformative. While there is a overall chronology to the chapters, within each it's a spiral back and forth between times and events. Also the author never really presents thoughtful analyses of key questions for anyone who would wish to read about Duveen or Berenson based upon her extensive investigation of the lives of both individuals. While there are numerous anecdotes and brief comments by contemporaries, one really ends with no understanding of how history should view either man.

This is one of the most enthralling biographies that I have read. In fact I have read it twice and will probably return to it in the future! Duveen was such an interesting character and he was associated with an equally fascinating array of rich and famous personalities. Reading about his flamboyant style and his often questionable sales tactics makes one realise that he was one of a kind.

If you are interested in the history of art collecting, art in general or just looking for a ripping yarn, you should enjoy Secrest's biography. The book is well researched and the writing style is very readable.

Interested readers are also urged to investigate S.N Behrman's book on Duveen. Originally published in the New Yorker in the early fifties, it charmingly complements Secrest's biography.

For someone interested in art, and more particulary in paintings, this is a very interesting book. Perhaps too many dates, too many names all mixed up in the course of some 40 or 50 years. However, i think it is the best the author could have done. Full of anecdotes, reading this book is also a very entertaining way of learning about the world of art dealers, auction firms and the greatest collectors of all time.
Very recommendable