Duveen sn behrman biography

In a series of articles originally published in The New Yorker, playwright S.N. Behrman evokes the larger-than-life Duveen and reveals the wheeling and dealing.
Playwright S.N. Behrman evokes the larger-than-life Duveen and reveals the wheeling and dealing, subterfuge, and spirited drama behind the sale of nearly—but.
In this exceptional biography SN Behrman tells the story of Duveen's rise to prestige, from delftware peddler to selling the greatest European paintings.

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Reviewed by Simon

A good book review – according to the unwritten rules agreed by the Shiny New Books editors – should be about the book, not simply an essay on the topic with incidental nods towards the text. That is one of the things (in my opinion) that sets blogs and online magazines apart from newspapers. But it is difficult not to make a review of S.N. Behrman’s Duveen (a biography of Joseph Duveen originally published in the New Yorker in 1951, then as a book in 1952) simply a discourse on art dealing. But I will try to balance the two.

I hadn’t heard of Duveen when I started the book and, indeed, had not even remembered that it was a biography until I was a handful of pages in. This is how it opens:

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.

There is a touch of the

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Duveen: The Story of the Most Spectacular Art Dealer of All Time

Description

‘When you pay high for the priceless, you’re getting it cheap.’ – Joseph Duveen

Joseph Duveen was the world’s most famous art dealer. His clients were amongst the most prominent and infamous Americans of the 20th century and included Mellon, Frick, Hearst, and Morgan. If you weren’t a client, chances are you were a nobody. Famous for his charm, shrewd salesmanship, relentless pursuit of the perfect objetd’art, and his ability to command eye-watering prices – Duveen was as unique as one of his priceless Old Masters.

In this exceptional biography S. N. Behrman tells the story of Duveen’s rise to prestige, from delftware peddler to selling the greatest European paintings to the greatest American millionaires. Duveen was a skilled salesman, enticing his well-heeled and business-savvy clients with visions of cultivation through acquisition of high-culture. He even laid the foundations for the great American museums of art, including the National Gallery and the Frick Collection, by persuading h

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(This is the first of a series of articles on Lord Duveen. Read the last part.)

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 re