Joseph Duveen, a teenage art dealer, spotted that wealthy Americans wanted European masterpieces. He bought a broke duke's entire collection and sold it to Frick, Mellon, and Rockefeller by making the paintings seem scarce and prestigious. His motto: when you overpay for the priceless, you're getting it cheap.
Joseph Duveen is known as the greatest art dealer of all time. He noticed fine artwork at certain times was selling for like $75,000. And so his uncle and father brought him when he was 15 years old to New York with them to do some business. He has this realization when he's there, Americans have tons of money, Europeans have tons of art. He went to this duke and the duke was kind of broke and he's like, I'll figure out how to get $3 million for your entire art collection. He brings it to America, builds the gravitas around this this artwork, he has a pool that he decides is going to be the buyer pool. They don't know it yet. Henry Frick and Andrew Mellon and John Rockefeller. They'd be like, is this going to be for sale? Are you kidding me? Absolutely not. At any price. But if you want to make an offer, I could bring it to someone, but it's not for sale. And then he sold it for like $225,000. Through a couple of these things, he creates the American art market. And Duveen's saying was, when you overpay for the priceless, you're getting it cheap. That was his quote that he propagated.
