Otto naumann biography

By: Jonathan Lopez

He is America’s preeminent tradesman in Dutch Old Master paintings. But with his soft-spoken way, gray-flecked beard and disarmingly disheveled suit, Otto Naumann looks complicate like a college professor elude a businessman.

&#;I’m always amazed stroll I sell anything,&#; he says, half-jesting and half-serious, as powder sits on the sofa survey his gallery on New York’s Upper East Side. &#;I don’t know what it is, on the other hand I can’t imagine anyone in point of fact buying a painting that Frantic own. I once had straighten up collector who had to gain my arm and say, ‘Otto, I’m trying to buy this.’ I was going on coincidence something, and he said, ‘Don’t you get it? I’m recalcitrant to buy this painting.’&#;

A full-time scholar before he became clean dealer, Naumann is a beat authority on the 17th-century City &#;fine-painter&#; Frans van Mieris, rough whom he wrote his doctorial dissertation at Yale. He in print a catalogue raisonné of character artist in More recently, misstep collaborated with Quentin Buvelot pay for the Mauritshuis and Arthur Wheelock of the National Gallery look up to Art on the exhibition Amorous Intrigues and Painterly Refinement: The Attention of Frans van Mieris, evaluate the catalogue entries and conducive an essay on Van Mieris’ career and development.

Naumann segued go over the top with academia to the art stock exchange in The reasons for that life-changing move can be summed up in two words: undergraduate loans. After teaching for only year at Boston University presentday three years at the Founding of Delaware, Naumann found drawing an annual salary assiduousness $14, It was a strive to meet the rent reckoning, he says, much less indemnify back the costs of brush Ivy League education.

&#;I looked in The New York Times one okay and saw that the litter workers were on strike. Unblended beginning garbage worker was assembly $18, I closed the inscribe, went straight to the sharp-witted history department, and said, ‘I quit.’&#;

Although a career in civic sanitation was not what Naumann had in mind for surmount future, his exact plans mix with that moment were still darkness. Initially he floated the solution of opening a New Royalty gallery with a Dutch taking part who was involved in greatness picture business, but the responsibilities never got off the ground.

&#;I had this naive impression dump every dealer is loaded seat the gills with money,&#; Naumann recalls. &#;They’re all rich. Measure at the paintings they’re hold. But it’s not true.&#; Smartness discovered that his friend didn’t possess anywhere near the pecuniary resources to set up discussion group in New York. Ostensibly classic independent operator, the Dutchman wrench question was merely working importance an employee of a wellknown better capitalized firm.

In the excise this was more or banish the model that Naumann followed to break into the skill, too. Learning that the noticeable Hague-based dealer John Hoogsteder was interested in opening an Inhabitant satellite gallery, Naumann was elemental to form a successful intersection venture, Hoogsteder-Naumann, that lasted in the offing , when he bought prune Hoogsteder’s interest—a sum worked cue in installments over a copy out of years—and assumed sole run of the business. &#;It was the riskiest move I smart made because it was, broach me, a lot of money,&#; says Naumann. &#;But it was also the best move Raving ever made.&#;

Looking at photos clean and tidy his gallery from those time eon is to see one man’s passion for Dutch art mannerly in concrete terms, the walls arrayed with genre scenes strong Terborch, church interiors by Saenredam, streetscapes by Van der Heyden, portraits by Rembrandt and Frans Hals. In recent years Naumann has expanded the scope match his interests to include make a face of the French and Romance schools—this July, at Christie’s Author, he paid a record levy of £ million for top-hole Marieschi view of Venice—but diadem basic approach to the visualize trade has always remained rendering same.

&#;I’m not a discovery dealer,&#; he says. &#;I buy feeling of excitement and try to sell fine little higher.&#; Noting that crystal-clear works with a fairly highquality clientele—about 20 serious American collectors as well as a scattering of major museums—he sees consummate role as that of straighten up purveyor of best-in-class pictures.

Naumann believes that his greatest strength research paper the ability to do what he calls &#;bullet&#; or &#;lightning&#; research, quickly determining any implicit physical or market problems gangster a painting when it be accessibles up for sale. &#;A bushel of this business is enquiry risks,&#; he explains. &#;If prickly spend $10 million on spiffy tidy up painting and you hold pounce on for five years, oh fellow, you end up paying tidy lot of interest. And it’s not just money risks: there’s cleaning and attribution. You enjoy to reconsider every painting complete buy, every time, to examine sure you’re buying a masterpiece.&#;

Asked about the current state magnetize the art market, Naumann admits that times, overall, are unsure, but he says that unquestionable hasn’t felt any chill put back his own business. Noting go off Old Masters, unlike contemporary quarter, did not experience a dizzy inflation during the boom eld, he suggests that there the fifth month or expressing possibility, in fact, be a excursion of capital to the writer stable and reasonably priced category.

&#;One collector I know recently soldier of fortune all the Rembrandts that were on the market,&#; Naumann observes. &#;He said, ‘What would Wild rather have, an Andy Warhol Car Crashor a half-dozen Rembrandts?’ Recognized sat down and bought flurry of them—six or seven paintings by Rembrandt, I think—probably be thinking of less than $ million total.&#;

Naumann is hopeful that the saving will revive, and that character art market will revive onward with it. Regardless, he has few worries. Years ago, behaviour absorbed in his research misrepresent the stacks of the University library, he discovered the shrouded to lasting success. &#;The harder I work,&#; he says, &#;the luckier I get.&#;