The art market is full of personalities, but dealers and gallerists often seem little more than names when the market gets covered in print. In a new series, Apollo asks art dealers to introduce themselves and their businesses.
Tell us a bit about the history of your business
I arrived in London in 1977 to study at Sotheby’s Works of Art course. This course, and the art world in general, would be unrecognisable today. I started the Dover Street Gallery in 1990 as the market imploded. Now I’ve been four years in the gallery on Old Bond Street.
What are your specialist fields?
Austrian and German art 1900–1945 (Egon Schiele in particular); French modernism of the same period; and British art of the First World War.
What’s been your greatest triumph as a dealer?
Finding unattributed works by Egon Schiele.
And your greatest professional regret?
Not keeping more of what I’ve sold.
How has the market in your field changed since you started dealing?
The dominance of auction houses has changed the collection of art: in Alfred Taubman’s words, ‘selling art has much in common with selling root beer’.
Do you collect yourself? And in the same field as you deal?
Yes.
Which work have you been sorriest to part with?
Too many to name.
If you weren’t an art dealer, what would you be?
A landscape gardener.
Richard Nagy is based on Old Bond Street, central London.
PAD London is on at Berkeley Square, London, until 20 October 2013.
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