DUVEEN, Miss Dorothy (1914)

Dorothy Duveen (1903-1985), the only child and daughter of art dealer Joseph Duveen, married firstly on 23 July 1931 (div. 1937) as his first wife, Lt Cmdr Sir William Francis Cuthbert Garthwaite, 2nd Bt. DSC (born 3 January 1906; died 1993), 1st son and heir of Sir William Garthwaite, 1st Bt., by his first wife Francesca Margharita Parfett, daughter of William Parfett. In 1938 she married Dr. Brian Hartop Burns, a surgeon, who predeceased her by a few weeks.

American Art News, April 18, 1914 reported as follows: ‘A. Muller-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.’

Dolly Duveen seems not to have kept either of the two portraits Muller-Ury painted of her. She had been painted by many artists in her childhood and young adulthood, as was her father, including Harrington Mann, Ambrose McEvoy, Artur Lajos Halmi, and London miniaturist Dorothy Vicaji. She was later painted by Augustus John whose portrait she did keep and bequeathed to the National Portrait Gallery, London. The present editor was approached by a woman who had known Dolly in her final years in London after he gave a lecture on Muller-Ury at the Swiss Embassy who said that Dolly sold off most of her things; however, there is evidence in the Duveen Papers in the Getty Research Center that some of Dolly’s things were destroyed in a fire in a storage unit.