A significant artist-patron association copy of the sumptuous privately printed edition of Maurice Brockwell’s catalogue of the English highlights of Henry Edwards Huntington’s extraordinary art collection, inscribed by the art dealer and Huntington’s personal advisor, and primary source of his British School paintings, Sir Joseph Duveen to his own patronee and “my friend,” the British society painter Oswald Birley, whose portrait of the US railroad magnate and collector is reproduced as the book’s frontispiece (the sole contemporary painting featured: see images to left and below).
The influential and contentious British art dealer and “art world power broker” Sir Joseph Duveen (1869–1939) assembled Huntington’s collection of classic English paintings, featuring works by John Hoppner, Thomas Lawrence, Joshua Reynolds, George Romney, J. M. W. Turner (see item 7 for more Turner) and others, as represented in this catalogue, and including, perhaps most famously, Thomas Gainsborough’s ‘The Blue Boy’, which Duveen had purchased from Grosvenor House, from the Duke of Westminster for an undisclosed sum, and sold to Huntington for the gargantuan figure of $728,800 (£182,200).
It was Duveen who introduced Huntington and Birley (1880–1952), and indeed was integral to helping make the younger painter in America, providing his first solo exhibition in New York at the Duveen Galleries on Fifth Avenue in January 1923, as well as lining up sitters from the echelons of the rich and influential. In February 1924 Duveen arranged for Birley to travel to San Marino, California, to paint Huntington and his rather extraordinary wife Arabella, who was also a collector. The magnate “was so pleased with his portrait – destined for the planned library and museum to bear his name – that he asked Birley to paint a copy for his New York residence. The two portraits were completed by 10 March and then rushed to New York to be included in Birley’s second exhibition Portraits by Oswald Birley (20 March–3 April 1924) at the Duveen Galleries”. It is this portrait that is reproduced as the catalogue’s frontispiece (see image to right): a success for both artist and art dealer underscored by this edition, with this copy inscribed, and presumably presented, by Duveen to Birley in March 1928, when the artist was again in New York for his third exhibition at the Duveen Galleries, Oswald Birley: Recent Studies and Portraits.
An important copy highlighting an important early C20th art world relationship. [ref: 3659]