Synopses & Reviews
A startling number of masterpieces now in American museums are there because of the shrewdness of one man, Joseph Duveen, art dealer to John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Mellon, Henry Clay Frick, and William Randolph Hearst. In a series of articles originally published in The New Yorker, playwright S.N. Behrman evokes the larger-than-life Duveen and reveals the wheeling and dealing, subterfuge, and spirited drama behind the sale of nearly but not quite priceless Rembrandts, Vermeers, Turners, and Bellinis.
Review
"It is the best profile The New Yorker has ever printed incredibly entertaining and at the same time a filling in of a chapter of American cultural history that hadn't been written before." d Wilson
Review
"A witty and hypnotically readable biography." Clifton Fadiman
Review
"Behrman's laconic wit...is never cruel, although the temptation is great, and he can write with beautifully simple understanding of the loneliness and fearlessness that great wealth must often bring to its owners...It's an engaging story, superbly told." P.V. Farrell