Joseph Duveen 1st Baron Duveen of Millbank

Joseph Duveen, 1st Baron Duveen of Millbank , 1869-1939, English art dealer, b. Hull. Beginning his career (1886) in his father's antiques firm, Duveen Brothers, he soon took over the business and expanded it to mammoth dimensions, presiding over galleries in London, Paris, and New York and specializing in the acquisition and sale of Old Master pictures. He contributed paintings to many museums, notably London's National Gallery, British Museum, and Tate Gallery. After 1906 he employed Bernard Berenson to authenticate his great acquisitions in Renaissance art. A connoisseur with a famously fine eye for quality and a salesman with an amazing gift of persuasion, Duveen built an empire out of the business of art dealing. He was the most influential agent in the forming of the art collections of such culture-seeking American tycoons as Henry Clay Frick, William Randolph Hearst, Henry E. Huntington, Samuel H. Kress, Andrew Mellon, John D. Rockefeller, and Joseph E. Widener. Many of these collections are now in museums. Duveen was created baron in 1933.

Bibliography: See biographies by S. N. Behrman (1952, rev. ed. 1972) and M. Secrest (2004); C. Simpson, Artful Partners (1986).

Duveen, Joseph ( Baron Duveen of Millbank) (b Hull, 14 Oct. 1869; d London, 25 May 1939). English art dealer, patron, and philanthropist. In 1886 he entered the firm of his father Sir Joseph Duveen (1843–1908) and with his enormous energy, larger-than-life personality, and great gift for salesmanship expanded it into the leading firm of art dealers in the world, operating on an unprecedented scale. He employed Bernard Berenson to give his seal of authenticity to the Renaissance paintings he sold and he was the main agent in forming the collections of such fabulously wealthy Americans as Frick, Kress, and Andrew Mellon. Duveen's benefactions to the arts were also on a princely scale. In addition to giving many pictures to national collections, he paid for extensions or new galleries at the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the Tate Gallery, and the British Museum (to house the Elgin Marbles). He also bore the cost of decorations at the Wallace Collection and of Rex Whistler's murals at the Tate Gallery and endowed a professorship in the history of art at London University.

Duveen, Joseph ( Baron Duveen of Millbank) (1869–1939). English art dealer, patron, and philanthropist. In 1886 he entered the firm of his father, Sir Joseph Duveen (1843–1908), and with his enormous energy, larger-than-life personality, and great gift for salesmanship expanded it into the biggest firm of art dealers in the world, operating on an unprecedented scale. He employed Bernard Berenson to give his seal of authenticity to the Renaissance paintings he sold and he was the main agent in forming the collections of such fabulously wealthy Americans as Frick, Kress, and Andrew Mellon. Duveen's benefactions to the arts were also on a princely scale. In addition to giving many pictures to national collections, he paid for extensions or new galleries at the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the Tate Gallery, and the British Museum (to house the Elgin Marbles). He also bore the cost of decorations at the Wallace Collection and of Rex Whistler's murals at the Tate Gallery and endowed a professorship in the history of art at London University.