Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves (36 page)

One of Marks' more original marketing ploys was his habit of holding exclusive dinners, with the showroom elaborately decorated and some of the best wares pressed into use on the table where collectors could handle them. The idea was instantly successful. Marks was a genial and accomplished host, and meals were presented with a wealth of exceptional silverware, china, glass and ornament. No hint of Marks' tradesman origins disrupted the carefully constructed atmosphere of refinement and style. He knew his wine, and served only the finest vintages to complement each course. He enjoyed his food, and treated his guests to complex dishes from around the world. For Marks the gourmet, dining was an experience, an adventure, and a chance to show how far he had come. These were dinners to dazzle even the wealthy; chic occasions to flatter the fashionable: like the visiting card, they presented London society with a well-worked image of Marks and his business. This was astute and effective salesmanship.

Encouraged by the success of his new showroom and with interest in blue-and-white china continuing to grow, Marks conceived his pièce de résistance, bigger, more elaborate and more expensive than he had ever before attempted. For this, he required a collaborator, and he turned to one of his best customers, Sir Henry Thompson. Sir Henry was a fashionable man, a member of the Fine Arts Club and the influential Athenaeum Club, founded in 1824 for leading figures in art, literature and science and their patrons. He was surgeon to Queen Victoria and his impressive patient list included several
other monarchs: he successfully removed a bladder stone from the King of Belgium, Leopold I, when two other eminent surgeons had failed. He published respected medical works and had the wide-ranging interests of an educated and sociable gentleman: he was an enthusiastic astronomer, his paintings were exhibited twelve times at the Royal Academy, he wrote two successful novels, and he founded the Cremation Society, advocating cremation as an hygienic, convenient and modern alternative to burial. His celebrated ‘Octave' dinners, when eight guests were served eight courses, were the talking point of London society. And when the fashion for collecting in general, and collecting blue-and-white in particular, gripped the city, Sir Henry inevitably wanted to be part of it.

Sir Henry first turned his attention to blue-and-white in 1870, and Marks soon persuaded the busy surgeon to allow him to act on his behalf. Combining his expertise with Sir Henry's apparently bottomless funds, he was convinced that they could together create the most impressive and important collection of oriental china that had ever been seen. He was under no illusions as to Sir Henry's long-term commitment to collecting china, and guessed that his enthusiasm for blue-and-white might be fleeting. But he recognized another opportunity to set himself apart from other dealers and consolidate his reputation among the most successful and wealthiest collectors. Bringing together the finest pieces was also an intellectual and aesthetic challenge, and Sir Henry's wealth gave him the chance to create a collection he could never afford for himself. He went to work and by 1878 had brought together a wealth of unique pieces on Sir Henry's behalf, sourced from his contacts in Paris, Holland and the Far East. No other man in London could have done so much so quickly. But this was not just a private arrangement with Sir Henry; it was a fashionable enterprise for them both, something of a publicity stunt. The next step was to show the world what they had achieved.

It was a dim city evening when the preparations were finished for the magnificent exhibition which was to display Sir Henry's collection to a discerning celebrity public. Marks' showroom glittered. Display plinths had been repainted, door handles polished, and extra gas chandeliers fitted down the length of the shop. Marks had gone back to Norman Shaw, now busy designing for his artist clients, and together they had thought through every detail of how the exhibition should look. A witty and elegant invitation was designed, showing many of Marks' friends, including a stern Whistler with his monocle. The window display gleamed, music was played by a liveried quartet and servants flitted to and fro. The immaculate display of blue-and-white was arranged in profusion in every part of the gallery.

Guests flocked out of the damp mist and soon the showroom was bustling with life. There was chatter and laughter, and animated admiration for the pieces on display. To guard against Sir Henry's fickleness, Marks had made sure there was a permanent record of the collection in an illustrated catalogue. It was in itself something to collect, elaborately bound in leather inlaid with a blue-and-white ceramic plaque and with artwork by Whistler; a polite scrum gathered around the table where it was displayed, as guests elbowed their way to the front to inspect it. But the best was yet to come. The highlight of the exhibition was a dinner, described by one of Marks' friends as ‘a very recherché supper served. . . on wonderful Blue and White dishes, which formed extraordinary foils to the rich pastries, glowing lobsters and wonderful jellies'.
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Even by the extravagant standards of wealthy Victorian society, it was a lavish meal: glittering with candles and dressed with flowers and feathers. Long tables ran the length of the gallery, piled high with intricate pastries, decorated sides of fish, piles of seafood, dripping joints of meat and platters of game, sweetmeats, fruits and elegant deserts – all carefully chosen to complement the shapes and patterns of Sir Henry's china.

Building on such landmark occasions, the Marks business continued to prosper, showing the way for a new type of art dealer. Old Emanuel, though impressed by his son's industry and ambition, was bewildered and dazzled. The hybrid of dealership and gallery which his son was inventing was very different to the dark, cramped premises of the original shop. It was a matter of style and celebrity and glamour as well as connoisseurship and collecting. As the last guests drifted away from the Thompson exhibition opening, clustering on the street to hail passing hansom cabs or hurrying through the mist to their clubs for a nightcap, they had been entertained and charmed. They had eaten and drunk well, had met their friends and had been close to the exquisite poise of a very special collection. It had been a memorable night on the fashionable circuit, with an underlying sense of scholarship and good taste lending a satisfying gravity. Marks had, as always, judged well. In the later decades of the nineteenth century, there were almost 500 dealers in London alone, offering collectors everything from prints and drawings to wood carving and fine furniture.
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It was a cut-throat business – many dealers struggled, and many never made it from the backstreet premises and jumbled curiosity shops that had been the hallmark of the trade for years. But for those who, like Marks, were inventive in their marketing, knowledgeable and courageous, there were fortunes and reputations to be made.

What most clients prized in their dealers was not just the opportunity to socialize and dine well – although this was clearly a pleasant enough diversion – but expertise and unerring good judgement. Both Joseph Joel Duveen and his famous son were renowned for what was called ‘the Duveen Eye' – a collector's instincts, a discriminating sagacity, a superb visual memory and the ability to spot hidden treasures. It was something that all successful dealers had to have, or claim to have, but there was no
training for it. The only way to educate ‘the eye' was through experience. It was, wrote the art critic Bernard Berenson at the end of the century, essential to acquire and understand visual language so that it became as instinctive as spoken language: ‘Many see pictures without knowing what to look at. . . We must look and look till we live the painting and for a fleeting moment become identified with it.'
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It was, of course, a quality collectors also wanted for themselves. But even those who boasted an educated eye of their own were often still keen to employ dealers on their behalf. It was convenient to have someone to undertake the hard, often grubby, work – the travelling and research, the sourcing and bartering. The feeling remained that dealers were at the bottom of the collecting heap, there to do the tasks that collectors preferred not to tackle. In 1870, Charlotte Schreiber recorded a telling moment in her journal, betraying the entrenched attitudes of the elite collector. As she explored the Paris showrooms, she came upon ‘a painful scene'. At 59 Rue Bourbon, she called upon Monsieur Bock, who told her his ‘sad story': ‘to the effect that he was a Russian of private means, had lived many years in England, and, in the course of his travels had made a fair collection; that he lost everything in the failure of a Bank and was obliged to sell it all; and then, having a wife and seven children, turned dealer. He told us of his struggles, but said he never lost courage. . . He had known Mayer, Franks, Panizzi, in fact all our finest collectors. If true, his tale was a very melancholy one,' marvelled Charlotte.
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Her assumptions are clear: becoming a dealer was the last resort for a man of means and a collector, a source of some shame, requiring the utmost fortitude, a far cry from the honourable society of men like Joseph Mayer and Augustus Franks.

Marks was no doubt aware that he could only mix with the likes of Sir Henry Thompson – who was at the aristocratic apex of the collecting hierarchy – as a dealer, an odd hybrid of teacher,
designer, banker and servant. But he was fortunate not to have to rely entirely on such high-profile society clients; there were other collectors less judgemental than Charlotte Schreiber. Rossetti and Whistler were both passionate about china, and genuinely fond of the man who supplied them. And alongside the extravagance of this artistic circle, there were also many more secluded collectors up and down the country who dealt with Marks on equal terms. In particular, in the increasingly international world of collecting, there was one set of wealthy clients conveniently detached from the English obsession with class: Marks was beginning to make himself indispensable to a number of Americans.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, wealthy travellers from the United States could regularly be seen around the great sites of European history – sitting in gondolas alongside the Doge's Palace in Venice, loitering in Florentine piazzas, climbing up to the Acropolis, ambling by the Seine and, of course, making their way around the National Gallery and through the museums and parks and squares of London. In a world of changing economic and social power, they were the new Grand Tourists, revisiting and reinventing the routes that had been trodden by eighteenth-century English aristocrats. Crossing the Atlantic was no longer the barrier it had been (although the voyage still took a good fifty days) and first-hand experience of ancient European culture was considered an indispensable way of improving one's education, cultural expertise and social standing (for those who could afford it). It was what Henry James called ‘a mild adventure'; for those who preferred to stay at home, writers like James sent back long series of travel articles about Europe which were eagerly bought up by magazines.
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To educated Americans, Europe appeared more civilized and sophisticated – though more stultified – than its transatlantic neighbour, not least because of its long legacy of cultural traditions and artefacts.
Among the American middle classes, there was a fashionable enthusiasm for old Europe, and for the objects that represented it. The Americans were becoming collectors.

The influx of Americans into English drawing rooms caused quite a stir. They tended to disrupt customary ways of doing things, and there was a widespread perception that they were modern and unconventional, less deferential to the rigorously enforced hierarchies of class and more relaxed in their standards of behaviour than the strict English Victorians. The contribution these outsiders made to society was greeted with considerable ambivalence – and the shrewd awareness that Americans had money to spend. The usual European visit lasted for months, and sometimes years, during which antiques and souvenirs were often required as mementos of place and time. In addition, a growing contingent of expatriate Americans were making their homes in London and other major cities. All in all, the new American collectors were a growing market, and for dealers like Marks it was important to claim a part of it. An outsider himself, he had no difficulty in accepting and working with Americans. His circle of friends included not only the witty and lively Whistler, born in Massachusetts in 1834, but also George Lucas, an American dealer who lived in Paris, and a number of prominent American collectors. The most significant of these was J. Pierpont Morgan, a Connecticut-born financier and philanthropist who was one of the world's richest men and one of its most influential collectors.
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Pierpont Morgan's taste was eclectic. He became particularly known for the collection of books, manuscripts and seals housed in his private New York library, and for his spectacular collection of gemstones.
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He also appreciated painting and sculpture, as well as the decorative arts, and he had a prestigious collection of wrist and pocket watches. But his business concerns, in everything from steel and railways to the army, required most of his attention and
he often preferred to rely on trusted dealers to put together his collections. His first jewellery collection was largely assembled by Tiffany & Co., and in particular by its chief gemologist George Frederick Kunz, while the New York editor, clergyman and collector William Hayes Ward had brought together the core of his collection of ancient engraved seals. To satisfy his desire for Renaissance treasures, Morgan was drawn to Europe and especially to England, which was the acknowledged centre for the market. In his house on London's Princes Gate, he consulted renowned experts like Robinson, who knew where the finest pieces were located and how to reach them. Before long, he had turned to Murray Marks, relying on him to undertake much of the research on his behalf and to navigate the London trade to arrange the best deals.