The Duveen Brothers

Duveen Brothers   The Duveen Brothers art dealership was founded in England in 1877 by brothers Joseph Joel (1843-1908) and Henry J. Duveen (1854-1919), who were of Dutch-Jewish heritage. They were among the most influential art dealers of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.   The Duveens started off with an antique shop in Hull (Yorkshire) before opening a London office in 1879, through which they dealt in porcelain, objets d’art, tapestries and furniture. The firm gained an international reputation and opened a branch in New York in 1886, serving wealthy American collectors. Their Paris branch opened in 1897.   Joseph Duveen (1869-1939), son of Joseph Joel Duveen, took over his father’s business in 1908, working with his uncle. He chose to specialize in Old Master paintings, buying from private collections in Europe and selling to extremely wealthy collectors in the United States. Joseph Duveen became a dominant figure in the art market and a specialist in Dutch, Italian, English and French Old Master paintings.   After Joseph Duveen’s death in 1939, Edward Fowles (1885-1971) took over as director until 1964, when he sold the business to Norton Simon. The Duveen Brothers’ business records were donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.   Together with Parisian-based art dealer Nathan Wildenstein, Duveen Brothers acquired the entire collection of Rodolphe Kann in 1907 for 21 million francs. Two years later, Duveen Brothers acquired a significant part of the collection of Maurice Kann (brother of Rodolphe Kann) for 2.5 million dollars.   Links: ·        [about:blank https://rkd.nl/nl/explore/artists/Duveen%20Brothers] ·        [about:blank https://www.getty.edu/research/tools/guides_bibliographies/duveen/] ·        [about:blank https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt3n39n6jd/entire_text/] ·        Vignon, Charlotte. Duveen Brothers and the Market for Decorative Arts, 1880-1940. D. Giles Ltd, 2019. ·        Secrest, Meryle. Duveen. Amsterdam University Press, 2005.