Art: Sir Joseph and His Brethren

The collection which the late Curator Wilhelm von Bede of Berlin’s Kaiser Friedrich Museum used to call “the richest treasury of Renaissance masterpieces in private ownership,” was well on its way to the U. S. last week. Its value: $6,000,000. Its sale price: undisclosed. Purchaser of the collection and agent for its ultimate distribution to U. S. tycoons was the one firm of art dealers capable of handling a transaction of that magnitude: Duveen Brothers of London, Paris & New York.

In Paris in the spring of 1870 Charles Timbal was a well known art critic and collector, Gustave Dreyfus was a well known banker. Critic Timbal had a collection of paintings, bronzes, sculpture, medals of the Italian High Renaissance of which he was inordinately fond. Banker Dreyfus had a great deal of money.

Came the Franco-Prussian War, Sedan, the fall of the Empire. The Prussians encircled Paris. Fiery Leon Gambetta escaped in a balloon to direct the war from Tours. The beleaguered Parisians were left to eat rats and sawdust bread, shout the “Marseillaise” from the ramparts. Banker Dreyfus had an opportunity to purchase Critic Timbal’s collection at a very attractive price. During the next 20 years, when defeated France was re-establishing herself, he had many similar opportunities to add to it.

In 1914, just as France was entering another, greater war, Gustave Dreyfus died in the house near the Pare Monceau where his pictures, his statues were kept. By French law his collection was divided among his son and three daughters, and though Dreyfus fils wished to keep the collection intact, his sisters preferred the money. For the past ten years dealers have been delicately led to understand that for a sufficient price, the Dreyfus collection was for sale. There was no lack of offers, but the Dreyfus family were not to be rushed into a sale. Only last week, before the potent checkbook of suave Sir Joseph Duveen, did the Dreyfuses capitulate. Other dealers wagered that if he did not pay the appraised price of $6,000,000 he paid something very close to it.

It may be unfair to Prince Liechtenstein of Liechtenstein to call the Dreyfus collection the “greatest private collection in the world,” but Duveen Brothers got a good deal for their money. The collection is notably strong in sculpture: Verrocchio, Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci, Mino da Fiesole, Bertoldo di Giovanni, Andrea Riccio. Painters include: Giovanni Bellini, Fra Filippo Lippi, Pesellino, Ghirlandaio. There is also a collection of medals and small bronzes which art critics call irreplaceable.

Banker Dreyfus not only collected the works of great artists, he tried whenever possible to have those works the portraits of great Renaissance characters. There is Philip the Handsome of Spain; Princess Beatrice of Aragon; the Princess Medea, daughter of that great swashbuckler and Bergamese Bravo, Bartolommeo Colleoni; Giovanni Bentivoglio, tyrant of Bologna, and the dashing Guiliano dei Medici, murdered in church by the Pazzi.

The Buyers. So long and so spectacularly has Sir Joseph Duveen, baronet, been in the public prints* that many people forget the existence of his brothers four— Ernest, Edward, Benjamin, Charles. Charles Duveen left the firm of Duveen Bros, years ago to start a New York furniture shop of his own under the name of Charles of London. Sir Joseph’s son-in-law, Armand Lowengard manages the Paris branch. But though Ernest, Edward and Benjamin are partners in the company, actively engaged in its traffickings, the public is not far wrong in believing that Sir Joseph is Duveen Brothers. He is president (“head factor”) of the firm. Employes are unable to recall a single internationally important deal which any of the other brothers put through. They hasten to add that once the Dreyfus collection arrives in the U. S. it will not be put up for auction. “Duveen Brothers,” a manager explained solemnly last week, “has its important private customers.”

To the Metropolitan

Last week Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art received notable gifts from 1) a nun, 2) an insurance clerk.

The nun is Mrs. Emilie Thorn Post, relict of Tycoon Edward C. Post. Last May she gave her highwalled villa at Newport, R. I. to the Carmelite Sisterhood for a nunnery, became a novice therein (TIME, May 26). Because nuns must be poor, she last week yielded to the Museum her husband’s collection of rare paintings, drawings, miniatures, objects in gold, silver, marble, bronze.

The clerk was the late William Christian Paul, who until his death last January worked for Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. by day, pored over books on rare oriental fabrics in his Bronx home by night. Out of his small salary, bit by bit, he spent between $30,000 and $40,000 for old Chinese court robes, Tibetan embroideries and similar textiles. This bequest to the Museum was his entire estate, was uncontested by his nephew, only heir. Last week Alan Priest, the Museum’s Curator of Far Eastern art, said the fabrics were worth far more than Donor Paul’s expenditures, also said the gift makes the Museum’s collection of Chinese textiles second only to that in the Imperial Palace Museum in Peking.

*Sir Joseph’s paramount position as an art expert is acknowledged by all but other experts. His latest public appearance was two months ago when he paid a reputed $100,000 to Mrs. Andree Harm of Kansas City, Mo. to settle out of court her libel suit for five times that amount. __ He had hindered her selling a picture to the Kansas City Art Museum by asserting that her picture which she believes is da Vinci’s La Belle Ferronierc was a copy of an original in the Louvre (TIME, Feb. 18, 1928 ct scq.). Commented Art Digest at the time: “If Sir Joseph had not settled the famous case of Hahti v. Duveen . . . The Art Digest on authority which it considers infallible, would have expected a witness to have been produced . . . who would have sworn that he painted at least 20 pictures that have passed into the collections of leading American connoisseurs . . . as the works of immortal old masters, fully authenticated by the experts whose word is considered sacred.”