ARTOF THE DODGY DEALER
Art dealers are purveyors of fantasy, and art dealing is about persuading people to buy things they don’t need, writes Philip Hook, the author of this wonderfully entertaining book mining the stories and lives of the characters littering the long history of buying and selling art.
According to the Roman historian Pliny the Elder, paintings in the 1st century AD were often priced by weight, a practice that continued well into the 17th century.
The first art markets (precursors of fairs such as Maastricht or Frieze in London) started in Flanders in the 15th century. In 1553, more than four tons of paintings and 70,000 yards of tapestries were shipped from Antwerp to Spain and Portugal. But in recent centuries the price of a work of art has, of course, been determined by its desirability. It’s a dealer’s job to match-make clients and works and then fan the flames of avarice.
The most notorious was Joseph Duveen (18691939), a Londoner who in one year, 1923, sold more than £13m worth of art and is said to have placed three-quarters of all Renaissance Italian art, much of it smuggled, into American collections.
Little stood in the way of a sale: Duveen falsified provenance, and even altered paintings. Unfashionable ovalshaped canvasses were cut into neat squares and his restorers beautified faces and figures to reflect contemporary tastes. He bribed servants to collect useful ‘BelowStairs Intelligence’ – he did so in the case of one of my own relatives, Maurice de Rothschild, who was so afflicted by constipation that before attempting a sale, Duveen would call his butler for updates on his master’s bowel movements.
When the American collector Carl Hamilton requested, for the purposes of adoption, ‘young fellows – about 12 or 13 years old’ – to be shipped back to America along with art works, Duveen dealer Joseph Duveen sold £13m worth of art in 1923 supplied a French and a Spanish child. The sales ploys of other dealers pale by comparison.
The greatest dealers are also taste-makers who create markets for movements, encourage public endowments, fashion great collections and, most importantly of all, champion the reputations and livelihoods of their artists. In the 1870s and 1880s, French dealer Paul Durand-Ruel kept the spluttering flame of Impressionism alive. Monet, close to giving up, was fortified by a cheque for 1,500 francs and a letter urging him to find ‘the strength to overcome the countless difficulties you face at every step’.
Another dealer, DanielHenry Kahnweiler, championed Picasso, Braque, Leger and Gris early in their careers and helped build extraordinary collections for the Russians Ivan Morozov and Sergei Shchukin.
Even the thrillingly dishonest Duveen encouraged collectors to donate to museums, and rooms at the heart of Tate Britain still carry his name.
Philip Hook, who works for an international auction house, has a front- row seat to today’s art world but those hoping for an exposé of contemporary practices will be disappointed.
Nevertheless, this book is a veritable gallery of rogues, stuffed full of cracking stories and preposterous characters.