Count Adolfo Muller-Ury, KCSG
Airolo, Switzerland 1862 – New York 1947

Portrait of Sir Joseph Duveen
signed ‘A. Muller Ury’ in the upper right

oil on canvas

33 1/4×24 1/2 inches (84.4×62.2 cm.)

PROVENANCE:
Lawrence Steigrad Gallery, New York; Private Collection.

LITERATURE: The New York Herald, Sunday, April 22, 1923, p. 24, ‘Painter of Popes is this New York Artist’ (final illustration showing the artist working on the portrait); Stephen Conrad, ‘Reintroducing Adolfo Muller-Ury (1862-1947): The artist, two dealers, four counts and the Kaiser: a hitherto unknown episode in international art history’ in The British Art Journal, Volume IV, No. 2. Summer 2003, p.58 (reproduced from an original photograph as unlocated); Meryle Secrest, Duveen: A Life in Art, New York, 2004 (reproduced in colour on the dustwrapper).

NOTE: Joseph Duveen was born on October 14, 1869 in Hull in Yorkshire, England, the eldest son of the thirteen children of the future Sir Joseph Joel Duveen who founded the famous art dealing business with his brother Henry. On the death of his father in 1908 Joseph took control of the company and began selling masterpieces by the Old Masters to America’s new millionaires, many of whose acquisitions became the foundations of America’s museum collections. A generous patron and benefactor, in England, France, Cyprus and elsewhere, he was knighted in 1919, created a Baronet in 1926, and finally elevated to the Peerage in 1933. He died at Claridges Hotel, London, on May 25, 1939.

Muller-Ury first met the young Joseph Duveen in early 1891 when he apparently borrowed from Duveen Brothers’ Fifth Avenue gallery a Chinese vase and antique table for inclusion in his very large portrait of Mrs Theodore Havemeyer (Preservation Society of Newport, Rhode Island). The success of the portrait of Mrs. Havemeyer launched Muller-Ury on a highly successful career as New York’s ‘Painter to the 400’. In the present state of knowledge one can only speculate that, since he soon became socially prominent and would portray many sitters from New York’s upper class, it is probable that he would have recommended Duveen Brothers to many of his wealthy sitters as the purveyors of artistic luxuries just as they may have introduced the artist to many of their valued clients. Certainly by the time that Joseph Duveen became head of the firm at the age of 29, Muller-Ury and Duveen Brothers would have found this arrangement of continual mutual benefit. It is documented on several occasions that the two men travelled together, and after Duveen bought and exhibited the late J. Pierpont Morgan’s collection of Antique Chinese Porcelain in 1919 he allowed Muller-Ury to paint pictures of many of the vases at his Fifth Avenue gallery. Important Duveen clients whom Muller-Ury painted over the years include J. Pierpont Morgan, Benjamin Altman, Michael Friedsam, William Salomon and Henry Huntington. And, of course, he also painted three portraits of Duveen himself (the last being commissioned by Duveen in October 1935), though in fact the first portrait he painted for his friend was a full-length of his daughter Dorothy in 1914. American Art News, April 12, 1914 reported as follows: ‘A. Müller-Ury has recently completed an unusually attractive life-size, standing portrait of little Miss Dorothy Duveen, daughter of Mr. Joseph Duveen, wearing a black velvet dress. A landscape background enhances the composition and the delicate modeling of the childish flesh.’ He also painted a bust-length portrait of her in early 1925 that was displayed at his exhibition at the Duveen Galleries, 720 Fifth Avenue, New York, April 6 - 18, 1925, No. 7, as “MISS X”. Both portraits are now lost.

The present portrait of Duveen appears to have been executed in early 1923 when the sitter was nearly 54. The portrait was reproduced in an almost completed state on the easel in The New York Herald picture article of the artist in his studio, no doubt published because Muller-Ury had completed several portraits of Pope Pius XI in the summer of 1922 and in March 1923 he had been honoured by the pope with a Knighthood of St. Gregory the Great. The caption to the photograph reads ‘Although Muller-Ury never laughs during a sitting, Sir Joseph Duveen has just told an anecdote that compels the artist to break his rule.’ Meryle Secrest has recently described the present portrait as ‘particularly sympathetic�uncharacteristic and revealing’ and one cannot doubt that after more than thirty years acquaintance Muller-Ury had indeed been able to portray something of the inner restlessness that drove his friend. When he came to paint his extremely fine, but smaller, second portrait of Duveen in 1929 (Private Collection, Switzerland) the hands, cigar and papers were eschewed and the expression became more serious and somewhat haughty. When he executed his third portrait of the now Baron Duveen of Millbank about 1938 (lost) he returned to the frontal pose, but with the hands now empty, his depiction of his mortally ill friend recaptured perhaps only a little of those qualities that make the present portrait so revealing.

It is known that a portrait of Duveen was exhibited at the artist’s last show ‘Portraits and Roses’ at French & Co. Inc, New York, April 21 - May 3, 1947, as No. 11, but which of the three portraits is unknown. An extra lot called Portrait of Sir Joseph Duveen was sold at the Plaza Art Galleries, 9-11, East 59th Street, New York, Friday Evening, December 5, 1947, Sale No. 2813, as Lot 75C (Sold for $20.00 – marked copy in the Frick Art Reference Library).

STEPHEN CONRAD