What was announced officially yesterday was something that the trade knew for a while now- venerable dealers, and their own near neighbors in Knightsbridge, Hotspur and Jeremy will cease trading soon. Their remaining stock will be sold at Christie’s in November.
Doubtless trading conditions have been tough, but the principals of both firms cite as their reasons for closing that they are in their sixties, are tired of working 7 days a week year-round and would like to retire.
Based on our experience with even our short tenure in the trade, I am more than inclined to take them at their word. As much as we enjoy what we do, it is all-consuming. And in spite of general complaints about difficulty in current trading conditions, I don’t know, even in better economic times, when it ever was not all-consuming.
In what were, arguably, the good old days in the art and antiques trade in the early years of the last century, even the redoubtable Joseph Duveen, for all his elaborate sales and showroom apparatus, was essentially a one-man band. Although he had a worldwide network of ‘runners’ scouting items to purchase, it was largely Duveen who negotiated the deal. On the sales side, Duveen’s involvement was even greater. Virtually nothing closed without his direct involvement. As he made his peripatetic way from his galleries in New York to London to Paris, he knew, as his staff knew, that nothing of importance would occur unless he was there in person. It was a punishing existence that forced him to interrupt his schedule for six weeks every summer to ‘de-tox’ at one of the European spa towns. There were, of course, other Duveens in the business, but the patriarch was more than primus inter pares, and even the younger family members bit the dust before Joseph Duveen.
Depth and continuity of management in the art and antiques trade is a tricky proposition, and for successful galleries it has traditionally spanned generations. Duveen’s success was built on the two generations before him. I mentioned Galerie J. Kugel a couple of blog entries ago- they represent 5 generations, and Robin Kern of the aforementioned Hotspur is the third generation of his family operating the business. The why of this is hard to put a finger on. What I do know, however, is that the successful dealer must possess an encyclopedic knowledge about his particular field. He must not only know about the objects he represents, but must also have an exhaustive knowledge about the historical period from which they came. It occurs to me that, once acquired, knowledge about the business and the reams of auxiliary knowledge that must also be part of a dealer’s stock in trade is most successfully passed on to the dealer’s progeny who’ve acquired it by a constant exposure akin to osmosis. Although successful, even the best firms are seldom very large in terms of staff. They do, however, tend to punch above their weight, probably as a function of the high profile material they handle, and the high profile collectors from whom they derive their patronage.
Doubtless this note of affiliation with the great and the good has required that so many successful dealers traditionally were composed of the younger sons who, thanks to primogeniture, stood not to inherit but could at least take advantage of family connection to make a go of it in the art and antiques trade. Now, it seems as if the sexier activity is hedge fund management, so the trade is bereft of a lot of its outside pool of staff support.
Frankly, lots of people who today might formerly have worked in the retail trade also find they have a home at the major auction houses. With their efforts to market their services to the retail buyer, the auction houses are much larger staff-wise than they used to be. The prospect of a regular paycheck, and regular working hours, are too good for the present generation of would-otherwise-be dealers to pass up.
The long and the short of it is, of the dealers we know, very few have involvement in the business save the present generation. Once the existing ownership decides to hang it up, the only prospect is to sell the storefront and consign the stock to auction. Unfortunately, this has happened fairly often in the last few years and the prospect is that it will continue apace. None of us in the trade are getting any younger.