Peter Nahum

Peter Nahum
Occupation Art historian and dealer
Television Antiques Roadshow
Awards FRSA

Peter Nahum is an English art dealer, author, lecturer and journalist who is known for his many appearances on the long running BBC television programme Antiques Roadshow, on which he appeared from 1981 to 2002.[1] He discovered a long lost Richard Dadd painting on the show which was subsequently sold to the British Museum.[2]

Biography

Nahum was educated at Sherborne School and began his career at Peter Wilson's Sotheby's in 1966. During his 17 years with the company he initiated the Victorian Painting Department at the newly opened Sotheby's Belgravia in 1971 and was head of the British Painting Department (1840 to Contemporary) until his departure in 1984. He was also a Senior Director sitting on the chairman's committee and advisor to the British Rail Pension Fund on Victorian Paintings. The British Rail investment collection of Victorian Paintings that Peter Nahum formed, although it was sold after he left the company and not at the most opportune time, averaged a capital increase of 17½ percent per annum. He has handled a large proportion of the most important Victorian paintings to come on the market. Peter Nahum is a Fellow of The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA).[3]

He left Sotheby's in 1984 to open his own gallery, The Leicester Galleries,[nb 1] in St James's, London, specialising in paintings, drawings and sculptures of the highest quality from the 19th and 20th centuries. He now works independently, actively buying and selling and is currently advisor to major private collections and museums throughout the world, signatory on authentication certificates for Victorian paintings sold to Japan and official valuer for the Department of Arts, Heritage and Environment of the Government of Australia. He also acts as a celebrity auctioneer for many charities. He is a member of the BADA (The British Antique Dealers' Association), television personality, academic, lecturer, author, frame designer and frequent lender of paintings to international exhibitions.

Public appearances

From 1981 to 2002 Peter Nahum was a regular contributor to the BBC's Antiques Roadshow rediscovering Richard Dadd's lost watercolour Artists Halt in the Desert in 1987, which was later sold to the British Museum and an album of Filipino landscapes sold in 1995 for £240,000. Other BBC Television appearances include Omnibus, 1983 with Richard Baker on Richard Dadd's Oberon and Titania, and In at the Deep End, 1984, a three-quarter of an hour program during which he taught television journalist Chris Searle to auctioneer. He has also appeared on Breakfast Television, The City Program and Signals and on Sixty Minutes, to name a few, as well as various radio talk shows.

In 1986, Peter Nahum lectured on Victorian Painters as Super Stars - Their Public and Private Art, at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, USA; in 1993 on The Poetry of Crisis. British Art 1933-1951 at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and more recently The Strange Forces around the Finding of Richard Dadd’s “Artist’s Halt in the Desert” for the National Arts Collection Fund. He lectures to student bodies and various other organisations.

Bibliography

Peter Nahum writes for daily press, for antiques magazines and museum & gallery catalogues.

His published works include:

Contributions

DVD documentary

Museum clients

Since opening his own gallery in 1984 Peter Nahum has sold works of art to various museums throughout the world including:

USA and Canada

Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Boston College Museum of Art, Massachusetts; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; County Museum, Los Angeles; Dahesh Museum, New York; Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan; Elveheim Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Morgan Library, New York; Middlebury College Museum, Vermont; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; National Gallery, Washington; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; Princeton University Museum, New Jersey; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California; St Louis Museum of Art, Missouri; University Art Gallery, Middlebury, Vermont; Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Utah; Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut; Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, Los Angeles

United Kingdom

British Museum; Imperial War Museum; Leighton House; Museum of London; National Portrait Gallery; Royal Air Force Museum, Tate, London

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Bethlem Royal Hospital Art Collection, Kent; Bradford Art Galleries and Museums; Cheltenham Art Gallery, Gloucestershire; Ferens Art Gallery, Hull; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery; Henry Moore Foundation; Leeds City Art Gallery; Leicester Museum and Art Gallery; Liverpool University Art Collection; Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester; Penlee House Museum, Cornwall; Rozelle House Gallery, Ayrshire; University of Liverpool Art Gallery; York City Art Gallery; Wakefield City Art Gallery, Yorkshire; National Coal Mining Museum, Wakefield, Yorkshire

Other countries

Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia

Musée de Louvre, Paris; Musée d'Orsay, Paris; Musée de Rouen ; Musée de Quimper ; Musée National Fernand Léger, Biot, France

National Gallery of Ireland

Nationalmuseum of Fine Arts, Stockholm, Sweden

Musée des Fées, Hinoshi; Koriyama City Museum of Art, Japan

Collections

Peter Nahum At The Leicester Galleries has put together for exhibition and eventual sale, several important international collections.

Peter Nahum, during his career at Sotheby's, conducted a great many auctions, at the most productive time at least once a week. Since leaving in 1984, he was the first official auctioneer in Athens to conduct auctions specialising in Greek paintings for Stavros Mihalarias. Now he auctions for Charity. Amongst others, he conducted the first charity auction for Sam Wanamaker at Shakespeare's Globe before it opened and more recently, in 2005, for Mark Rylance also in aid of Shakespeare's Globe.

Frame design

Peter Nahum has designed and built frames for the neo-classical painting by Frederic Lord Leighton in Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia; for an important watercolour by Dante Gabriel Rossetti for the Adelaide Museum of Art, Australia; for the masterpiece in Llandaff Cathedral, Wales: the triptych by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and for other museums and many private collections.

Web site building

Nahum's company, Online Galleries Ltd, has created the website portal for CINOA ("CINOA Internationale des Négociants en Oeuvres d'Art", the over-body trade association for the leading 5,000 art & antique dealers in the world), BADA (the British Antique Dealers Association) SLAD (the Society of London Art Dealers), LAPADA (the UK's largest association of professional art and antiques dealers), Sveriges Konst- och Antikhandlareforening (Sweden) and Associação Portuguesa dos Antiquários.

Notes

  1. ↑ He acquired the name in 1984 of the Leicester Galleries founded in 1902 and first located off of Leicester Square. It held its last show in 1975.

References

  1. ↑ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/antiquesuk/aboutseries/appraisers/nahum.html
  2. ↑ Higgie, Jennifer (31 May 2008). "Richard Dadd: madness and beauty". The Daily Telegraph (London). Retrieved 22 May 2010.
  3. ↑ http://www.debretts.com/people/biographies/browse/n/2146/Peter+John.aspx

External links