Joseph Duveen, 1st Baron Duveen of Millbank

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Joseph Duveen (October 14, 1869 Hull – May 25, 1939 London), later made Baron Duveen of Millbank, was one of the most influential art dealers of all time.

Duveen was British by birth, the eldest of eight sons of Sir Joseph Joel Duveen, a Jewish-Dutch immigrant who had set up a prosperous import business in Hull. The Duveen Brothers firm became very successful and became involved in trading antiques. Duveen Senior died in 1909 and Joseph took over the business. He moved the company into the risky, but lucrative, trade in paintings and quickly became one of the world's leading art dealers due to his good eye and skilled salesmanship.

His success is famously attributed to noticing that "Europe has a great deal of art, and America has a great deal of money." He made his fortune by buying works of art from declining European aristocrats and selling them to the millionaires of the United States. Duveen's clients included Henry Clay Frick, William Randolph Hearst, Henry E. Huntington, J.P. Morgan, Samuel H. Kress, Andrew Mellon, and John D. Rockefeller. The works that Duveen shipped across the Atlantic remain the core collections of many of the United States' most famous museums. Duveen played an important role in selling robber barons on the notion that buying art was also buying class. He greatly expanded the market, especially for Renaissance paintings; with the help of Bernard Berenson they were brought back into vogue.

Duveen quickly became extremely wealthy, and made many philanthropic donations. He gave paintings to many British galleries and he donated considerable sums to repair and expand several galleries and museums. Amongst other things he built the Duveen Gallery of the British Museum to house the Elgin Marbles and a major extension to the Tate Gallery. For his philanthropy he was knighted in 1919 and created a Baron in 1933.

In 1920 Duveen was sued by Andree Hahn for $500,000 following his comments questioning the authenticity of a version of the Da Vinci painting La belle Ferronière that she planned to sell. The court case took eight years to come to court and after the first jury returned an open verdict Duveen agreed to settle paying Hahn $60,000.

In recent years his reputation has faded somewhat. He was responsible for the damaging restoration work done to the Marbles. A number of the paintings he sold have turned out to be fakes; it is questionable whether he knew this when they were sold.

Duveen is single handedly credited with bringing great works of art from Europe to America, , his family specialized in antiques and pottery, but the young Duveen was not satisfied, he knew there was a fortune to be made in dealing with paintings of great masters, inevitably his first few acquisitions were not profitable.

Duveen eventually became "the art dealer",through shrewed planning and through his insight into human behaviour if a great painting came into the market he had to have it, no matter what, he always out did his bidders and eventually acquired the best collection, and if he paid a million dollars for it, he knew the buyer would also pay a million dollars. He went to great lengths to get hold of great works of art. his network went beyond American millionaries and English Royalty,and Art critics, he relied heavily on valets, maids and butlers of his household and his clients, because he paid everyone generously, he was always rewarded with information other art dealers didn't have access to. One incident from the book "Duveen" illustrates this very well. When Duveen was still a young man in his father's employment, a well-to-do couple came into the store to buy tapestries. As the lady was choosing and picking up pieces generously, Duveen's father discreetly asked him to find out who these people were, Duveen went outside to the horseman and was told that the couple were Lord and Lady Guinness. Duveen wrote their names and slipped it on a piece of paper to his father, when the lady was almost done she innocently asked "We are buying so many tapestries, you must be wondering why?" Duveen's father immediately beamed and said "Of course not Lady Guinness, you have so many beautiful homes, you will need more than one tapestry to decorate them!"

Another interesting fact which Duveen exploited in his American clients was the fact, that unlike in Europe being rich sometimes came with a title or a royal recognition, here once all the money had been made and things acquired, there was nothing else to look forward to, Duveen changed this by offering them immortality through buying great works of art. His genius lay in the fact that not only did he make his rich clients pay heavily for great works of art, but then made them donate it to galleries and museums for public display, two big examples are the Frick collection in New York city and the one made by Mellon and Kress to the National Gallery in Washington.