Skip to product information
1 of 1

Duveen Brothers and the Market for Decorative Arts, 1880-1940

Regular price $59.95
Sale price $59.95 Regular price $59.95
Sale Sold out
A fully illustrated study of the Duveen Brothers Company, the firm behind many of the United States' most famous museum collections.
  • Format:
  • 25 June 2019
View Product Details
Active in London, Paris, and New York, Duveen Brothers was the most prominent art and antique dealer from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. The firm’s success came from buying furniture, tapestries, porcelain, and other objets d’art and selling it at high prices to wealthy Americans, including Henry Clay Frick, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Arabella Huntington, and John Pierpont Morgan. Making extensive use of Duveen Brothers records at the Getty Research Institute, as well as letters and invoices in the archives of the firm’s clients, Vignon provides a rich study of this influential firm in the history of collecting.
files/i.png Icon
Price: $59.95
Pages: 320
Publisher: D Giles Limited
Imprint: GILES
Publication Date: 25 June 2019
Trim Size: 9.25 X 7.25 in
ISBN: 9781911282341
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:

"This well-priced, handsomely presented and extensively documented monograph provides a timely and valuable addition to the literature on Duveen Brothers, their strategies and their market"—Diana J. Kostyrko, The Burlington Magazine
"A Cautionary Tale of the World’s Superrich Blowing Millions on Art"—James Tarmy, Bloomberg
"Vignon’s is a scholarly book to be sure, but it offers so much fascinating original source material and insight into the family’s business practices"—Wendy Moonan, Introspective Magazine
"Meet the Scheming Guardians of Taste for America's Nouveau Riche 100 years ago"—William Newton, The Federalist
Charlotte Vignon is curator of Decorative Arts at The Frick Collection, as well as a Visiting Associate Professor at the Bard Graduate Center, New York. Vignon has organized a number of exhibitions at the Frick, including Pierre Gouthière: Virtuoso Gilder at the French Court (2016) which she co-authored. In 2018 she was awarded the Medal of Chevalier of The Order of Arts and Letters.
  • Acknowledgments by Charlotte Vignon
  • Preface
  • Commercial Strategies, Tricks, and Corruption 1. Conquering London, New York and Paris 2. Art dealers and interior decorators 3. Issues of restoration, authenticity and expertise 4. The illegal trade of Duveen Brothers Trade in objets d'art by Duveen Brothers 5. Chinese porcelain dealers 6. 18th-century French furniture and art dealers 7. Furniture Merchants and Works of Art from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
  • Conclusion
  • Essay by Kugel
  • Biographies
  • Bibliography
  • Photo Credits
  • Index