Thomas Kaplan

The collection also includes a c. 1629-1630 self-portrait of Lievens.

Thomas Scott Kaplan (born September 14, 1962) is an American businessman, philanthropist and art collector.

He is the world's largest private collector of Rembrandt's works.

Kaplan is the chairman and chief investment officer of The Electrum Group LLC, a New York City-based investment, advisory and asset management firm with a focus on the natural resources sector.

Kaplan had impressed Tiomkin by correctly predicting Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait several years before it took place.

Her mother, artist Mira Recanati, introduced him to Israeli investor Avi Tiomkin, who hired him as a junior partner in 1991.

When Tiomkin decided to concentrate his investments solely in Israel in 1993, Kaplan moved on to pursue his own entrepreneurial ventures.

Inspired by Marc Faber, who held that precious metals were insurance against the "monetary foolishness" of central governments, Kaplan focused on natural resources investing.

In 1993, he founded Apex Silver Mines to capitalize on the improving supply/demand fundamentals of metals.

While he was chairman and chief executive officer of Apex, his team discovered and financed the mining of the San Cristobal deposit in Bolivia.

Kaplan first began investing heavily in gold in 2000.

In 2003, a company related to Kaplan became the largest investor in African Platinum Plc (then known as Southern African Resources Plc).

Also in 2003, Kaplan founded Leor Exploration & Production LLC, which became the fastest-growing privately held hydrocarbon exploration and production company in the United States.

Kaplan and his wife, Dafna Recanati Kaplan, began to collect the art of the Dutch Golden Age in 2003.

In that year, they acquired their first Dutch painting: Gerrit Dou's Portrait of Dirck van Beresteyn.

The Leiden Collection, named after the Dutch town of Leiden where Rembrandt and Dou were born, is among the largest private collections of Dutch art in the world, with more than 250 paintings and drawings, most of which are included in a free, high-resolution online catalogue.

The Kaplans' intention was to establish a "lending library for old masters", including loans for special exhibitions as well as loans to bolster long-term installations.

Kaplan retired from Apex Silver at the end of 2004.

In 2007, Kaplan sold his position in African Platinum as part of a transaction in which the company was acquired by Impala Platinum Limited, at a valuation of $580 million.

In 2007, Leor's natural gas assets were sold to Encana (now Ovintiv) for $2.55 billion.

Since the sales of African Platinum and Leor in 2007, Kaplan has focused on the Electrum Group.

Its exploration arm, Electrum Ltd., which he co-founded with Dr. Larry Buchanan, owns gold exploration assets.

Its other entities hold interests in several publicly traded companies, including NovaGold Resources and Gabriel Resources Ltd., two companies that own gold resources.

Among its private interests, the Electrum Group is the controlling shareholder of Sunshine Silver Mining & Refining Corporation, which owns the Sunshine Mine in Idaho, a large silver mine in U.S. history, as well as the Los Gatos silver-zinc deposit in Mexico, which it is developing in partnership with Dowa of Japan.

Since 2017, he has been the chairman of the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH), a Geneva-based foundation established by France and the United Arab Emirates.

Born in New York City, Kaplan is the son of Lillian Jean Berger and Jason "Jay" Kaplan.

He and his family are Jewish.

In his youth, Kaplan developed a passion for wildlife conservation and for Rembrandt, which later inspired him to found the field conservation group Panthera and The Leiden Collection, the world's largest private grouping of works from the Dutch Golden Age.

At Oxford University, Kaplan earned bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in history.

He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Malayan counterinsurgency and the manner in which commodities influence strategic planning.

While earning his Ph.D, Kaplan worked as an analyst covering Israeli companies publicly traded in the U.S. On a business trip, he met his future wife, Dafna Recanati (the daughter of Israeli investor Leon Recanati), who had attended the same boarding school as Kaplan, Institut Le Rosey.

The collection, which includes Rembrandt's Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes and Minerva in Her Study, was featured in a three-part documentary entitled "Looking for Rembrandt" that aired on the BBC in April 2019 on the 350th anniversary of the Rembrandt's death.

Minerva in her Study and Bust of a Bearded Man were among 35 pictures lent to the Hermitage Amsterdam for an exhibition of Leiden Collection works in early 2023.

The Leiden Collection focuses on Rembrandt and his school.

It includes a group of fifteen paintings and two drawings by Rembrandt and members of his circle including his teacher, Pieter Lastman, and Jan Lievens.

Gatos Silver went public in October 2020, raising $170 million.

In August 2020, it was reported that Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway had made an investment in Barrick Gold, NovaGold's joint venture partner in the Donlin Gold mine project in Alaska.

Kaplan says his "mantra" is to "go for the great assets that give you tremendous underlying leverage to your theme... but only in jurisdictions that will allow you to keep the fruits of the leverage."

Analysts have referred to his highlighting the importance of jurisdictional risks in the mining industry as the "Kaplan Doctrine".

Kaplan's passion for the Dutch art began in his childhood.