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[[File:Joseph Duveen.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Joseph Duveen in the 1920s]]
'''Joseph Duveen, 1st Baron Duveen''' (14 October 1869, Hull – 25 May 1939, London), known as '''Sir Joseph Duveen, Bt.''', between 1927 and 1933, was a controversial British art dealer, considered one of the most influential [[art dealer]]s of all time.
==Life and career==
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His success is famously attributed to his observation 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]], [[Samuel H. Kress]], [[Andrew Mellon]], [[J. P. Morgan]], [[John D. Rockefeller Sr.]], [[Edward T. Stotesbury]], and a Canadian, [[Frank Porter Wood]]. 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 to self-made industrialists on the notion that buying art was also buying upper-class status. He greatly expanded the market, especially for [[Renaissance]] paintings with the help of [[Bernard Berenson]], who certified some questionable attributions, but whose ability to put an artistic personality behind paintings helped market them to purchasers whose dim perception of art history was as a series of biographies of "masters."
[[File:Elgin Marbles British Museum.jpg|thumb|left|The [[Elgin Marbles]] controversially on display in the Duveen Gallery of the British Museum]]
Duveen quickly became enormously wealthy and made many philanthropic donations. He donated paintings to British galleries and gave 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]], whose ownership is the subject of international controversy, and funded a major extension of the [[Tate Britain|Tate Gallery]]. The Duveen Gallery also provides the setting for official Museum receptions over wine and cheese, for which the Marbles provide a nice backdrop. It was in the Duveen Gallery that the Elgin Marbles were damaged in a series of incidents, including one in 1961 when two schoolboys knocked off a part of a [[centaur]]'s leg.<ref name="telegraph">Hastings, Chris. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1490023/Revealed-how-rowdy-schoolboys-knocked-a-leg-off-one-of-the-Elgin-Marbles.html Revealed: how rowdy schoolboys knocked a leg off one of the Elgin Marbles] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160407143411/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1490023/Revealed-how-rowdy-schoolboys-knocked-a-leg-off-one-of-the-Elgin-Marbles.html |date=7 April 2016}}, ''The Daily Telegraph'', 15 May 2005. Retrieved 6 March 2010.</ref> The dark Duveen Gallery is in marked contrast with the natural sunlight characteristic of [[Athens]], and the Gallery's preceived inappropriateness has been advanced as an argument in favour of the restitution of the Marbles to Greece, where they can be reunited with the rest of the monument and displayed in the [[Acropolis Museum]], in the natural sunlight of Athens, aligned with and in full view of the [[Parthenon]].<ref name=":0">{{cite web|url=http://www.arcspace.com/architects/Tschumi/|title=Bernard Tschumi Architects|work=arcspace.com|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928051614/http://www.arcspace.com/architects/Tschumi/|archive-date=28 September 2007|df=dmy-all}}</ref>
▲Duveen quickly became enormously wealthy and made many philanthropic donations. He donated paintings to British galleries and gave 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 funded a major extension of the [[Tate Britain|Tate Gallery]]. For his philanthropy, he was knighted in 1919, made a '''Baronet''' of Millbank in the City of Westminster in 1927<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=33249 |date=18 February 1927 |page=1111 }}</ref> and raised to the peerage as '''Baron Duveen''' of Millbank in the City of Westminster on 3 February 1933.<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=33909 |date=7 February 1933 |page=825 }}</ref>
==Personal life==
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In 1921, Duveen was sued by Andrée Hahn for $500,000 after making comments questioning the authenticity of a version of the Leonardo painting ''[[La belle ferronnière]]'' that she owned and had planned to sell.<ref>{{cite web|author= ''NYT'' staff |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1921/11/05/98766364.pdf |title=$500,000 Suit Hangs on da Vinci Fingers: Impressions on Canvas Said to Prove Master Painted Picture Denounced by Duveen |work=The New York Times |date=5 November 1921 |access-date=8 February 2014}}</ref> The case took seven years to come to trial and after the first jury returned an [[open verdict]], Duveen agreed to settle, paying Hahn $60,000 plus court costs.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/treasures-from-the-vault-the-man-of-la-belle-ferroniere/ |title=The Man of La Belle Ferronière: A fake Leonardo? The scandalous court case of art dealer Joseph Duveen |first=Emmabeth |last=Nanol |date=May 23, 2013 |website=blogs.getty.edu}}</ref>
In recent years, Duveen's reputation has suffered considerably. [[Art restoration|Restorers]] working under his guidance damaged [[Old Master]] panel paintings by scraping off old varnish and giving the paintings a glossy finish. He was also personally responsible for the damaging restoration work done to the Elgin Marbles.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-2281.2004.00220.x |title=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-2281.2004.00220.x|first=Elisabeth |last=Kehoe |date=November, 2004 |website=blogs.getty.edu}}</ref> A number of the paintings he sold have turned out to be [[fakes]]; it is uncertain whether he knew this when they were sold.{{Citation needed|date=February 2020}}
==Legacy==
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