Duveen A Life in Art

Chapter One The Chase It is generally agreed that, of the select band of women enterprising enough to be called collectors in the nineteenth century, Lady Charlotte Schreiber won hands down. Possessed of considerable means, dauntless energy, and the zest for the chase which is the natural prerequisite for the making of great collections, Lady Charlotte knew no barriers when it came to her own quarry. These included lace, fans, and playing cards, and, above all, ceramics. She loved china with a passion in the days when hardly anyone knew enough to recognize Chelsea, Bow, Worcester, and Derby, or cared, leaving such treasures to be picked up in any old junk shop for derisory sums. The more she collected, in those halcyon days of the 1860s and 1870s, the more enthralled she became by the chase. As her son Montague Guest wrote, "She hunted high and low, through England and abroad; France, Holland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Turkey, all were ransacked; she left no stone unturned, no difficulty, discomfort, fatigue, or hardship of travel daunted her, or turned her from her purpose, and she would come back, after weeks on the Continent . . . rich with the fruits of her expeditions" No doubt she benefited from those tips by anonymous scouts that figure so largely in such narratives. On one occasion she learned that there were some wonderful pieces of china for sale in a tiny farmhouse miles from any town or railway. In the pursuit of such hidden treasure a collector needed to be infinitely ready to conjure up any means of transportation available. There is an eyewitness account of this particular hunt, so typical of Lady Charlotte's enterprise, by someone who had also received a tip, perhaps from the same source. He, too, was hot on the trail, which involved an inordinately slow and lengthy journey by train. As this hunter neared the quarry he observed a passenger coach on a road parallel to the tracks coming toward him. The fly roared past at breakneck speed, but he managed to catch a glimpse of a certain indomitable face. He knew, before he reached his destination, that he had arrived too late. The disappointed buyer was Joel Joseph Duveen, a man who, it must be said, was her equal in terms of energy, dash, and devil-may-care determination. It is sometimes thought that his son Joseph Duveen, the most spectacular art dealer the world has ever known, appeared in all his singularity from a back street in the Yorkshire town of Hull. This convenient fiction glides over the fact that the future Lord Duveen was in all essential respects modeled after his equally formidable father. Here was a man who, in the best Horatio Alger tradition, began from nothing, coming from nowhere, and at the end of a scintillating career, as Sir Joseph Duveen, was dining with aristocrats and on intimate terms with kings, rich, successful, and feared. To take charge of an establishment that has risen to the heights of Old Bond Street is not quite the same as having reached there in the first place; but that is another part of the story. The riddle of Joseph Duveen starts with the story of his father, and in both men one sees characteristics that were to imprint these personalities on their age; men who, like Isambard Kingdom Brunel, for instance, but metaphorically, threw bridges across chasms and hollowed out mountains to reach their goals. An early photograph of Joel Joseph shows a wide, high-cheeked face, one ear dextrously cocked, as if awaiting the latest rumor, a fussily trimmed beard and mustache, broad, flat, pudgy hands and the insouciant air of a man who will leap up in a second and dash out of the door. The expression is alert and good-natured, optimistic; and there is something about the smile that suggests someone not only prepared to challenge authority but used to discovering, as Alice did in Wonderland, that most barriers built by custom and snSecrest, Meryle is the author of 'Duveen A Life in Art', published 2004 under ISBN 9780375410420 and ISBN 0375410422.