Word: duveens
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...Sempach burghers themselves had ordered the windows removed in 1814 to let more light into their hall. Afterward they were sold to a composer for a handful of pocket change and their travels began. One of the Rothschilds bought them in 1853. Duveen Bros., the London art dealers, got hold of them in 1897 and offered them to the Swiss National Museum for $1,250 apiece. While the Swiss deliberated, the elder J. P. Morgan snapped them up. In 1942, Honegger bought them at an auction of part of the Morgan Collection, had them fitted into window frames...
...fifth and final manuscript of the Gettysburg Address ($54,000), the Bay Psalm Book, first book published In the U.S. ($151,000), the manuscript of Alice in Wonderland ($50,000), and a lock of George Washington's hair. His biggest sale was in 1928, when Lord Duveen, British dealer and collector, paid $360,000 for Gainsborough's The Harvest Waggon. That auction, from the estate of U.S. Steel's Judge Elbert Gary, brought a whopping $2.3 million, the alltime U.S. record...
...acre estate in San Marino, Calif., in sight of the Sierra Madres, Huntington built two immense homes for his treasures. There, in a hall lined with million-dollar Boucher tapestries, he held many a midnight session with Rosenbach and Sir Joseph Duveen, planning collecting coups. Then, in 1919, Huntington deeded the whole kit & caboodle to the public. "The ownership of a fine library," he observed, "is the swiftest and surest way to immortality...
Collector Bache's favorite painters were Raphael, Holbein, Goya, Fragonard. But he seldom ventured to buy paintings without the advice of Britain's No. 1 art dealer, Lord Duveen, whose merchandising motto was: "Nothing but recognized masterpieces." The result is a popular quip: "The Bache collection-too, too Duveen !", and a group of paintings unmarred by any of the second-and third-rate art that usually creeps into such galleries...
...esthetic matters. Collector Bache lent a willing ear to Lord Duveen, he handled the business end of his collection with the same care that he watched ticker tapes. In 1937, by an arrangement with New York State, he formed the Jules Bache Foundation. This enabled him to live on the third floor of his Manhattan Museum, enjoy his pictures, pay no taxes on the property. (In 1936, so many Bache holdings were outside the U.S. that Art-Lover Bache was unable to pay any Federal income tax at all that year.) But before he died, Jules Bache changed his mind...