Quotes

“All of the arts, poetry, music, ritual, the visible arts, the theater, must singly and together create the most comprehensive art of all, a humanized society, and its masterpiece, free man”

“I am only a picture-taster, the way others are wine-or tea-tasters.”

 “You know, this house has a peculiar effect on people.  It makes them behave as though they were in church.” 

“Between truth and the search for it, I choose the second."

"From childhood on I have had the dream of life lived as a sacrament. . . . The dream implied taking life ritually as something holy.”

 –Bernard Berenson

“I wish I could stand on a busy street corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours.”

“A complete life may be one ending in so full an identification with the oneself that there is no self left to die.”

“Joseph Duveen made his real debut as an art dealer in 1901, when he paid the biggest price that up to that time had been for a painting sold at a British auction - $70,250.”

–Duveen by S.N. Behrman

"A case in point is the Madonna in Child that came up for sale at Sotheby’s in 1927.  It was being sold as a Cima da Conegliano, and BB had formerly given it to Marco Basaiti.  BB now decided it was by Giovanni Bellini, the most famous name, which bumped the price up tenfold."

-Duveen: A Life in Art by Meryle Secrest

“Gifts to museums offered his clients not merely economy but immortality…Ultimately, in the National Gallery, Duveen provided a place that was big enough to absorb everything any client had bought or could buy.  It was Duveen’s final solution to the problem of wall space.” 

-Duveen by S.N. Behrman

“When you pay high for the priceless, you’re getting it cheap.” 

“From the beginning, Duveen felt that his educational mission was twofold- to teach millionaire American collectors what the great works of art were, and to teach them that they could get those works of art only through him.” 

-Duveen by S.N. Behrman