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The
main gallery at The Frick. 2:15
PM. Photo: JH.
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It
is a typical week between Christmas-and-New Year’s
in New York. Cold, not so cold, a dusting of snow, lots of grey
skies suggesting more snow, then warming temperatures. And quiet.
I was reminded of how it felt when I used to come here during college
vacations. Lots of people on the street, lots of touring around,
but quiet, subdued.
I’ve just finished Meryle Secrest’s
biography of Joseph
Duveen, one of the greatest art dealers in the history
of the great American collections of the 20th century. Lord
Duveen of Millbank,
as he was dubbed when made a baronet in the 1920s, was the first
born (in 1869) of a large family (eleven children) of a leading
dealer in porcelains and art in London, Joel Joseph Duveen.
The child grew up to be imbued with an obsession for the business.
He LOVED his business, and he was very good at it.
The book made me want to visit The Frick, which I’ve done
many many times, just to look again at some of the pieces that
Duveen brought to the collector, to re-visit with their stories
in mind.
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Elsie,
Sir Joseph, and Dolly Duveen making an Atlantic
crossing to New York in 1919. Duveen claimed to
have crossed the Atlantic more than a hundred times.
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Many
times I’ve heard people who are too young to have ever
known him, but know or are related to people who did know him,
say that Duveen was a crook. Implying of course that he conned
and gypped his clients. Someone the other day (who also never knew
him, or much about him) told me “He sold fakes.” According
to Meryle Secrest, it was true, he did sell fakes from time to
time. As does everyone in the art world. Not because he knew they
were fake but because he’d been tricked. Fakes and the Art
World are, I have learned from Meryle Secrest, are practically
synonymous.
Duveen on the other hand dealt in “the best.” He paid
top prices and he’d buy something that he didn’t have
a client for and still pay a top price for it. He was also a very
modern man (born at the height of the Victorian age) in that he
knew how
to market and how to merchandise. His public relations was often
brilliant.
And thus he attracted or went after the biggest of the big rich
American art collectors at the beginning of the 20th century. Otto
Kahn, Jules Bache, H.E. and Arabella Huntington, Andrew Mellon,
William Randolph Hearst, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Anna Dodge, S.H.
Kress, P.A.B. Widener, Benjamin Altman, Marjorie Meriwether Post,
Isabella Stewart Gardner, and Henry Clay Frick were
frequent buyers at Duveen’s galleries and they spent hundreds
of millions with him over the decades.
The man was a charmer, a fast-talker, a deal maker, an impassioned
man who loved art the way a gardener loves his flowers. He was
always working it, albeit with an elegant veneer that was a birthright.
A great many of his clients had come from nothing and made kingly
fortunes. Duveen met up with them when they were in their spending
mode, in their efforts to “raise themselves up,” to
manifest that kingliness that money encourages in many an imagination.
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Henry
Clay Frick
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Henry Clay Frick
was twenty years older than Duveen, a country boy from the hills
of Pennsylvania who had made an immense fortune
by the time Duveen came into his life. He was not highly cultured
although he developed an interest in pictures as a young man. By
the time he was prosperous, in the 1880s, he was buying, although
his selections were not as refined as they became. He was, according
to Meryle Secrest, basically a rich man who liked to listen to
the organ playing “The Rosary” and read the Saturday
Evening Post, one of the most popular magazines of the first half
of the 20th century.
Frick was drawn to New York after he made his great fortune,
like his one-time partner Andrew Carnegie, and continued
to do business here. For years he rented the Vanderbilt Mansion
at 640 Fifth Avenue
where W.H. Vanderbilt had his huge art gallery. Later, as his collection
was taking on an important form, he decided to build the house
on Fifth Avenue and 70th Street. By this time he had become an
important buyer of paintings in the world, meaning, Old Masters.
Occasionally he bought something through Duveen but for years Frick
bought most of his works of art from Knoedler, an arch-competitor
of Duveen.
Rene Gimpel, another art dealer described
Frick as a man with eyes of solid steel. He was a hard nut for
Duveen to crack.
According to Secrest, Duveen regarded Frick as a man with a tendency
to buy “junk.” He had never bought antique furnishings
or objets from anyone. And he always said he never would. But by
1915 as the mansion on Fifth and 70th was going up, he needed something
to put in it. Lots of things. Duveen sold only the best 18th century
French furniture. He turned to Duveen.
The problem for Duveen was pointing Frick in the right (or rather,
Duveen’s) direction. To gain the rich industrialist’s
confidence required appealing to him with the possibility of obtaining
something desirable. And since he wasn’t inclined to buy “beauty,” (Duveen’s
idea of beauty), the question was: how could he be convinced?
The opportunity came to Duveen in 1913 after the death of J.P.
Morgan. Morgan had one of the greatest private art collections
in America. And Morgan was a titan of world finance, so therefore
anything he owned had provenance. Some thought his collection would
go to the Met. But Morgan wanted them to dedicate a wing, named
for him, in exchange for the collection and this did not occur,
so he left it to his heirs.
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Detail
of a Fragonard panel
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Morgan’s
son Jack decided to sell much of his father’s
collection. But before this was done, there was a large exhibition
of Morgan art loaned to the Met. Among the items was the “Fragonard
Room” – fourteen panels painted by Jean-Honore
Fragonard called Romans d’amour et de la jeunesse.
These panels were commissioned in 1771 for a pavilion that Louis
XV was building for his last mistress, Madame
du Barry at Louveciennes.
However, the king died three years later, du Barry was automatically
exiled from the court and the panels remained in the possession
of the painter until his death in 1806. J.P. Morgan bought them
ninety-two years later in London from the firm of Thomas
Agnew,
and paid a huge price — $350,000 (millions in today’s
currency).
Duveen was,
at the time of Morgan’s purchase, involved in
the decoration of Morgan’s house at Prince’s Gate in
London. It was Duveen who decided the panels should have a special
room. After Morgan’s death, they were removed along with
the cornices and the woodwork from the Prince’s Gate room,
and shipped to New York. |
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The
Frick Collection on Fifth Avenue between 71st and 70th Street
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One
day, during the exhibit at the Met, Duveen happened to be visiting the museum
and he happened to see Frick’s dealer, Knoedler and his associates
studying the Fragonard panels. Putting two and two together, he
surmised that Knoedler planned to buy them from the Morgan estate
and sell them to Frick. The next morning Duveen went to see Jack
Morgan and asked the price of the panels. It was $1.25 million
(25 times that in today’s currency). Duveen offered Jack
Morgan a million cash. Morgan was unimpressed: “take it or
leave it,” he told Duveen. Duveen took it.
Duveen then asked one more thing of Jack Morgan. He asked him to give Mr. Frick
a call and tell him that Duveen had just bought the Fragonard Room and was willing
to sell it to Mr. Frick at cost. Done. Mr. Frick bought the panels and also charged
Duveen with their installation in the house at 1 East 70th Street.
Duveen also bought a vast collection of porcelains (1400 pieces) from the Morgan
estate, and for the astounding price of $3 million. First dibs on this fantastic
collection went, of course, to Mr. Frick for his new house, and he naturally
wanted to own what Mr. Morgan had owned. Duveen had laid the groundwork to acquire
a major client.
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Detail
of a Boucher panel
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Duveen ingratiated
himself with his refined skills at making the sale. In the long
run, as it always did with him, it paid off. Frick became a very
big customer
and went for the best that Duveen had to offer. But it wasn’t easy. Duveen’s
assistance with the Fragonard room confirmed his talents for directing interior
decoration, but Mr. Frick still remained loyal to his dealers at Knoedler's
when it came to buying paintings. Duveen, ever the competitor, continued to look
for ways to sell pictures to Frick. In time he found them, and Meryle Secrest
recounts those stories compellingly.
Yesterday afternoon at The Frick Collection there was a big crowd
of visitors.
I was somewhat surprised as I’m used to the space and quiet of the place.
It was pointed out, however, that this week when schools are out and many take
vacations, there are always more visitors. And, right now at The Frick they have
the La Fornarina by Raphael on exhibit in the Oval
Room. The painting has never been exhibited in the United States before and it
is stunningly beautiful.
JH and I looked around at some of the items that came through Lord Duveen and
I tried to imagine what it must have been like for those two men in these rooms
going over the plans and ideas for what is now one of the premier collections
open to the public in America. |
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