Rupert Maas (born 1960) is an English painting specialist and gallery owner.[1]
He was born in 1960, the same year that his father Jeremy started the Maas Gallery in Mayfair, London, dealing in Pre-Raphaelite paintings. He was educated at Sherborne School in Dorset (a, School House) 1974 –1978, and took a ‘Desmond’ in Art History at Essex University 1980–83. He sailed the Atlantic in the summer of 1983 and joined the Maas Gallery later that year. Following the death of his father in 1997 he owns and runs the Gallery, which deals in Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite, Romantic and Modern British paintings, watercolours, drawings, reproductive engravings and sculpture, and the work of two or three living artists, including Keiron Leach. Under Rupert’s father, the Gallery gained the reputation of having spearheaded the revival of interest in Victorian Art. Rupert has maintained this tradition and has arranged a number of important exhibitions at his Gallery, including "Pre-Raphaelites and Romantics", "Masters of British Illustration", ""John Ruskin and his Circle", "Burne-Jones", "Victorian Fairy Paintings", frequent exhibitions of Victorian engravings and annual exhibitions of Victorian Paintings.
Since 1995 he has appeared on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow and on Castle in the Country, as a picture specialist, and appears regularly on other programmes. He hit the headlines in late 2008 when he was seen and heard on an antiques roadshow programme to imply that women from Shropshire has fat ankles.[2] He served on the executive committee of The Society of London Art Dealers 1998–99. He co-owns and runs The Watercolours and Drawings Fair. He has regularly written articles for the arts press and lectures on art. He also promotes Ballantine’s whisky in the Far East.
Written valuations for insurance, probate, family division, Capital Gains Tax, Private Treaty and sale by auction are an important part of the business of the Maas Gallery. For 48 years the gallery has acted for private clients, solicitors, executors and trustees. Rupert Maas is frequently called upon to provide independent valuations for museums, both domestic and international, considering purchases of paintings, and he has previously valued individual pictures and entire collections (for example the John Wharlton Bunney 1828-1882 archive) for Acceptance in Lieu. In 2006 Maas was duped into paying £20,000 for a faked art work claimed to be by fairyland painter John Anster Fitzgerald (1823-1906).[3]
He is married with three daughters and lives in Camberwell in south London. His hobbies are sailing and reading.