The British-born son of a Dutch immigrant, this individual directly or indirectly helped found some important American art museums. The ethics of his association with a famed art historian have been called into question, but he ended up with a title and is the subject of a recent biography. Who was he (and who was the art historian)?

TabbyTom

I think this is Lord Duveen. Joseph Duveen was the son of Joel Duveen, a Dutch immigrant to Britain who opened an antique shop in Hull. He soon expanded his business to London and then to New York City, where his brother Henry brought in clients like John Pierpont Morgan and Peter Widener. Joseph, the eldest son, went into the family business in his teens and was spectacularly successful. He was knighted in 1919, got a baronetcy in 1926 and became a peer in 1933, taking the title Lord Duveen of Millbank (Millbank is the stretch of the Thames Embankment that houses the Tate Gallery, which Duveen remodelled). Duveen played an important part in setting up the Frick Collection in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. His historian friend would have been Bernard Berenson, who supplied “authentications” -often unreliable - for many of the paintings that Duveen sold. The two men fell out a couple of years before Duveen’s death over a question of attribution. This webpage has a review of a recent biography of Duveen and gives a lot of detail on his life: http://www.artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20041101-52807.html and there’s a portrait of him here: http://www.steigrad.com/cat/duveen2.html Jul 24 05, 1:47 AM

lanfranco

Very well done, TT, and extra credit for finding Schjeldahl's review of Secrest's biography. Duveen's (and Berenson's) role in art collecting among the robber barons is a fascinating one. I love his claim that while it's easy to find a painting for $50,000, locating one for a quarter million takes some doing. Jul 24 05, 7:22 AM