Purpose-Built: Duveen and the Commercial Art Gallery

Abstract

By the time the firm erected a purpose-built structure in New York in the second decade of the twentieth century, elite art dealers had recognized that the location and design of their premises could be carefully calibrated to achieve sales and distinction, two intertwined and interdependent goals. Such efforts were the culmination of a long trajectory, primarily over the course of the nineteenth century, whereby art merchants of the caliber and ambition of the Duveen Brothers, operating in metropolitan centers such as Paris, London, and New York, shed their artisanal origins as sellers of bric-a-brac and curiosities and positioned art as a luxury commodity worthy of significant investment. To do so meant adopting the trappings and locales of fashionable retail in combination with strategies for displaying works of art honed by art academies, artists' societies, and museums in order to sell an object and an experience. These dealers were also, in essence, trading their expertise, embodied not just in the catalogues and pedigrees that accompanied their wares, but also in the taste and discretion they exhibited in their choice of address and premises. [1] The Duveen Brothers' US venture was initiated by Henry J. Duveen (1854Duveen ( -1919, who arrived in the United States from Great Britain in the 1870s and began with what the New York Times described as "a small art shop in John Street, where he handled antique silverware, ivory carvings, rare porcelains, period furniture, and Oriental rugs." [2] As art historian Charlotte Vignon reveals, the premises, located in today's Financial District, were regarded as unpromising by his brother Joel Joseph Duveen (1843-1908), who later recounted, "But what a shock I got when I saw our business premises! They were in a bad neighbourhood, and the place was not much better than a storehouse." Moreover, he opined, "Our beautiful stock was badly placed and badly lit, and the windows were not good enough for an old clothes shop." To recompense took both time and money, and included relocating to Broadway and Ninteenth Street in the retail district known as "Ladies Mile," the fashionable shopping district at the time. Joel Duveen was finally pleased that "I had everything in a really good place with ample room to show things and proper lighting." [3] The stakes of geography and design of the shop were clearly high. In 1886, Henry Duveen moved the premises again to 262 Fifth Avenue, between Twenty-Eighth and Twenty-Ninth Streets, following the uptown move of upscale retail. [4] Then, in 1889, according to Vignon, he opened a second gallery at 2 West Twenty-Ninth Street in what was then a primarily residential district for the wealthy classes of New York. [5] In 1890, on the occasion of the reconciliation of the two brothers, who had worked separately in the preceding five years or so due to a disagreement, and the formal founding of the firm Duveen Brothers, the business moved to a new location at 302 Fifth Avenue in a brownstone