Descriptive Summary
Biographical/Historical Note
Administrative Information
Scope and Content of Collection
Indexing Terms
Descriptive Summary
Title: Duveen Brothers records
Date (inclusive): 1876-1981 (bulk 1909-1964)
Number: 960015
Creator/Collector:
Duveen Brothers
Physical Description:
394 Linear Feet
(584 boxes, 18 flat file folders)
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute
Special Collections
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles 90049-1688
reference@getty.edu
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref
(310) 440-7390
Abstract: Notable art dealers from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. The records provide a
detailed view of the Duveen Brothers business activities in London, Paris, and New York. Although the archive extends from
1876 to 1981, the bulk of the
material dates from Joseph Duveen's tenure as president of the firm, 1909-1939, and the period 1939-1964 when Edward Fowles
directed the firm (with
Armand Lowengard until 1943). The mass of documents, such as cables and letters, invoices, and ledger and stock books, give
a day-by-day account of art
dealing, business strategy, and the individuals involved. Included are some records from the Kleinberger Galleries, 1906-1971,
and 6 linear feet of
Edward Fowles's papers.
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Language: Collection material is in English
Biographical/Historical Note
Duveen Brothers, notable art dealers in London, Paris, and New York from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth
century, brought to America
high quality old master paintings and decorative arts from the great private collections in Europe. Under the guidance of
Joseph Duveen (1869-1939) and
assisted by art experts, most notably Bernard Berenson, the Duveen Brothers monopolized the American art market for five decades.
Duveen Brothers helped
to form the art collections of many extremely wealthy Americans. A number of these collections became the nuclei of U.S. museums
such as the Frick
Collection, the Huntington Art Collections and the National Gallery of Art.
The Duveen Brothers business began when Joseph Joel Duveen (1843-1908) and his younger brother, Henry J. Duveen (1855-1918),
left their home in
Meppel, Holland for Hull, England. They specialized in selling delftware from their native Holland and later branched out
to include Chinese porcelain,
tapestries, furniture, and old master paintings. The Duveens opened a London office in 1879; a New York office followed in
1886. In 1897 the firm closed
a temporary shop located on the rue de la Paix in Paris and reopened a grander store on the Place Vendôme, later referred
to as the "Little Palace." By
this time Duveen Brothers was purchasing important paintings, including acquisitions from the Mulgrave Castle sale of 1890
and the Murrieta sale of
1892.
Shortly after Henry J. Duveen arrived in New York to head the office there, his brother Joseph Joel sent his son Joseph (later
Sir Joseph of Millbank,
also known as Joe or just Duveen) to assist his uncle Henry. By the 1880s Henry had developed a clientele of American millionaires
whose wealth in those
years was without precedent. Joseph became more active in the management of the New York house, took over its operations in
1907, and served as
president of the firm between 1909 and 1939. One of the first changes Joseph Duveen made was to move the New York house to
a more highly visible
location on Fifth Avenue. He transformed the Duveen show rooms, displaying art with dramatic lighting in lavish surroundings.
He made grand gestures to
persuade prospective clients, as, for example, when he had an elaborate plaster model of Senator Clark's Fifth Avenue mansion
constructed (at the cost
of $20,000) to entice the Senator to hire Duveen Brothers to furnish it.
While in New York Joseph made a number of bold purchases on behalf of Duveen Brothers. In 1906 he acquired three large collections:
the Rodolfe Kann
collection, the Maurice Kann collection, and the Hainauer collection. In 1927 he bought the Robert H. Benson collection of
114 Italian paintings in
England and three years later he purchased the Dreyfus collection of Italian paintings and sculpture in Paris. Joseph sold
selections from the Dreyfus
collection to Andrew Mellon and Samuel H. Kress; these items formed the core of the National Gallery collections in Washington,
D.C. As late as 1939,
the year of his death, Joseph was still selling paintings and sculpture from these purchases.
As president of Duveen Brothers, Joseph developed with a number of clients extremely close ties that went beyond influencing
their art-buying habits.
He arranged travel plans for his important clients, designed their table settings, and stored their preferred cigars in the
Duveen Brothers' vaults.
Joseph Duveen was actively involved in numerous art organizations and served as a trustee for the National Gallery, London;
the Wallace Collection; and
the Imperial Gallery of Art, London. He was a member of the Council of the British School at Rome and of the National Art
Collections Fund. Joseph
founded the British Artists Exhibitions Organization for the encouragement of lesser known British artists. He provided for
additions to and extensions
of London museums, such as the Tate Gallery (a new building of several galleries for modern foreign art, works by Sargent,
and modern foreign
sculpture), the National Gallery (a new building), the National Portrait Gallery (a new building of several galleries), London
University, and the
British Museum (a new building for the housing of the Elgin marbles and Nereid statues). In 1930 he wrote
Thirty Years of British
Art
.
The Duveen Brothers' business began to decline after Joseph's death in 1939, at which time Armand Lowengard (Joseph Duveen's
nephew) and Edward Fowles
became joint owners of the firm. When Lowengard died in 1943, Edward Fowles assumed the presidency of Duveen Brothers. The
Nazi occupation of France
forced Duveen Brothers to evacuate Paris. The London office closed shortly thereafter. After the war Duveen Brothers had a
number of notable clients,
such as Henry Ford II and Robert Lehman, but the business never regained its former vibrancy. In 1964 Edward Fowles sold Duveen
Brothers to Norton
Simon, including the East 79th Street mansion and all remaining stock (excluding the business records). Edward Fowles served
as a consultant to the
Norton Simon Foundation and, in 1968, donated his papers and the Duveen Brothers business records to the Metropolitan Museum
of Art where they were
housed until 1996. In 1969 the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute purchased the Duveen library of books, periodicals,
exhibition catalogues,
and sales catalogues, along with a portion of the Duveen Brothers business records that was interfiled with the library and
remains at the Clark. In
1996 the Metropolitan Museum of Art donated the Duveen archive to the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute.
Administrative Information
Access
A microfilm copy (422 reels) of the archive is open for use by qualified researchers. The original papers are restricted because
they are brittle and
fragile. Additional microfilm copies of the archive have been deposited at the Thomas J. Watson Library of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York,
the Witt Library of the Courtauld Institute in London, and at the Institute national d'histoire de l'art in Paris.
Publication Rights
Preferred Citation
Duveen Brothers Records, 1876-1981, bulk 1909-1964, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 960015.
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa960015
Acquisition Information
Acquired from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996.
Processing History
The Photography Studio of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (in particular, Arvia Higgins and Nora Kennedy) cleaned, conserved,
re-housed, and indexed the
Duveen negatives, 1993-ca. 1996, prior to shipping the archive to the Getty.
At the Getty Research Library, Lynn Tapia and J. Gibbs performed initial unpacking and re-housing, and made a preliminary
box list, May - June 1996.
The following people processed the collection between 1996 and 2002: Julie Rosenberg, Vladimira Stefura, Teresa Morales,
Jenny Vasquez, Trevor Bond,
Courtney Booker, Ted Walbye, Jan Bender and J. Gibbs.
Teresa Morales arranged most of the archive and created a draft finding aid, between August 1997-July 1998.
The archive was microfilmed by the Microfilm Unit of the Southern Regional Library Facility, UCLA, between April 1999 and
May 2002.
Karen Meyer-Roux edited and revised the finding aid in July and August 2014, February and March 2015.
Digitized Material
Scope and Content of Collection
The Duveen Brothers archive,1876-1981, contains the business records for Duveen Brothers offices in New York, London, and
Paris in ca. 394 linear feet
(585 boxes, 18 flat file folders, ca. 2,000 negatives). It includes ledgers, sales books, stock reports, inventories, invoices,
correspondence (letters
and cables), manuscripts, newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs, X rays of paintings, acetate and glass plate negatives.
Also included in the archive are two related groups of records. The Edward Fowles papers, 1917-1981 (6 linear ft.), primarily
date from his period in
the Paris office of Duveen, but include some personal papers, particularly related to his memoir about Duveen Brothers. Kleinberger
& Co., Inc.
records, 1906-1971 (9 linear ft.), comprise correspondence with clients and other dealers, and include a small number of personal
papers of Harry G.
Sperling, president of Kleinberger Galleries.
The bulk of the Duveen records dates from Joseph Duveen's tenure as president of the firm, between 1909-1939, with relatively
full coverage through
Edward Fowles's tenure until 1964. The collection extensively documents the Duveen Brothers firm. The mass of detailed records,
such as cables, letters,
and invoices, provide a day-by-day account of art dealing, business strategy, and the individuals involved. The correspondence
in particular highlights
the relationships between employees of the Duveen Brothers, (e.g., Henry, Edward, and Joseph Duveen, Edward Fowles, Armand
Lowengard, and Bertram
Boggis) and clients, museum directors, curators, art historians, art dealers, restorers, scouts, and other consultants. The
correspondence between the
Duveen branches is voluminous and revealing of the strategies employed in buying and selling art. Much of the correspondence
is in carbon copies with
smaller amounts of original materials.
Extensive correspondence, as well as stock books, sales books, and invoices trace the movement of paintings, sculpture, and
European and Asian
decorative arts bought and sold through the firm. Correspondence with and about owners and collectors concerns offers, sales,
and purchases,
predominately of Italian and English old masters, for such clients as J.S. Bache, H.C. Frick, J.P. Morgan, H.E. Huntington,
S.H. Kress, E.T. Stotesbury,
and A. Mellon, to name just a few. Twelve boxes (6 lin.ft.) hold correspondence between Bernard Berenson and Duveen Brothers
staff. Many letters
document the correspondence with other scholars, such as Wilhelm von Bode, Max Friedländer, L. Venturi, Leo Planiscig, George
Swarzenski, W.R.
Valentiner, upon whom Duveen Brothers relied for expert opinions. Also included are records of lawsuits (Hahn vs. Duveen;
Hamilton vs. Duveen). Nearly
2,000 negatives, ca. 100 X rays of paintings, and ca. 1,000 photographs (some annotated by Berenson and other art experts)
document stock handled by the
firm.
Not included in the archive, but retained by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, are the bound X book (1910-1927), that documents
the paintings
authenticated by Bernard Berenson and sold by Duveen, and 10 client summary books (1894-1959) that record specific sales to
clients. Also at the
Metropolitan Museum are some 20 binders of photographs printed from the negatives in the archive. The Sterling & Francine
Clark Art Institute holds
approximately 240 cubic feet of Duveen records, along with the Duveen library of books and catalogues, many of them annotated.
Between 1999 and 2002 the Duveen archive was microfilmed by the SRLF Preservation Microfilming Service at UCLA for the Research
Library at the Getty
Research Institute. Also microfilmed were the X book and client summary notebooks owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Microfilm reel numbers are
noted in the Container list, below.
Arrangement note
The collection is organized in 5 series:
Series I. Business records,
1876-1964;
Series II. Papers and correspondence, 1901-1981;
Series III. Photographs, indices, negatives, and X rays;
Series IV. Double oversize materials from Series II;
Series V. Duveen records at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Indexing Terms
Subjects - Names
Widener, Joseph E. (Joseph Early), 1872-1943
Vermeer, Johannes, 1632-1675
Velázquez, Diego, 1599-1660
Van Dyck, Anthony, 1599-1641
Titian, approximately 1488-1576
Stotesbury, Edward Townsend, 1849-1938
Romney, George, 1734-1802
Simon, Norton, 1907-1993
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, 1606-1669
Reynolds, Joshua, Sir, 1723-1792
Raeburn, Henry, Sir, 1756-1823
Raphael, 1483-1520
Morgan, J. P. (John Pierpont), 1867-1943
Mellon, Andrew W. (Andrew William), 1855-1937
Memling, Hans, 1430?-1494
Kress, Samuel H. (Samuel Henry), 1863-1955
Lotto, Lorenzo, 1480?-1556?
Bellini, Giovanni, 1426?-1516
Bache, Jules S. (Jules Semon), 1861-1944
Hoppner, James, 1758-1810
Holbein, Hans, 1460-1524
Huntington, Henry Edwards, 1850-1927
Houdon, Jean Antoine, 1741-1828
Kann, Maurice
Kahn, Otto H., 1867-1934
Kann, Rodolphe
Goya, Francisco, 1746-1828
Giorgione, 1477 or 1478-1510
Gulbenkian, Calouste Sarkis
Greco, 1541?-1614
Hals, Frans, 1584-1666
Hainauer, Oscar
David, Gérard, approximately 1460-1523
Dreyfus, Gustave, 1837-1914
Frick, Henry Clay, 1849-1919
Benson, Robert, 1850-1929
Berenson, Bernard, 1865-1959
Getty, J. Paul (Jean Paul), 1892-1976
Botticelli, Sandro, 1444 or 1445-1510
Constable, John, 1776-1837
Subjects - Corporate Bodies
Wildenstein and Company (New York, N.Y.)
F. Kleinberger Galleries (New York, N.Y.)
Subjects - Topics
Art dealers -- France
Art dealers -- United States
Art -- Private collections
Collectors and collecting
Tapestry -- Collectors and collecting
Art -- Exhibitions
Art -- Expertising
Art dealers -- Great Britain
Sculpture, European -- Collectors and collecting
Rugs -- Collectors and collecting
Drawing, European -- Collectors and collecting
Decorative arts -- Collectors and collecting
Porcelain -- Collectors and collecting
Painting, European -- Collectors and collecting
Genres and Forms of Material
Photographic prints
Ledgers (account books)
Inventories
Black-and-white negatives
X rays
Stats (copies)
Correspondence
Contributors
Valentiner, Wilhelm Reinhold, 1880-1958
Thos. Agnew and Sons Ltd
Swarzenski, Georg, 1876-1957
Planiscig, Leo, 1887-1952
Berenson, Bernard, 1865-1959
F. Kleinberger Galleries (New York, N.Y.)
Friedländer, Max J., 1867-1958
Douglas, R. Langton (Robert Langton), 1864-1951
Duveen, Joseph Duveen, Baron, 1869-1939
Duveen Brothers
Duveen, Henry J., 1854-1919
Fowles, Edward
Birley, Oswald, 1880-1952
Bode, Wilhelm von, 1845-1929
Brockwell, Maurice W., 1869-1958