De Boer, in contrast, began to view his collecting as something that could augment, or at least complement, his professional life. “It demonstrated to many people in the Indian community that we were serious about India, rather than just consultants coming in and knocking over the next gas station,” de Boer says. “We were something else.”

Moreover, he adds, “When you serve clients at a senior level, at the top of the pyramid, most of the discussions I have with them aren’t powerpoint presentations.”

The goal, he continues, is to be able to speak about a client’s business but also to talk about politics or art.

“If all you are is a narrow analytic consultant, that will get you through your first 10 or 15 years,” he continues. “Beyond that, you need to have more than one engine to get you to fly high. Art was an additional engine.”

Massively Undervalued
With his professional and personal lives so aligned, de Boer set out to purchase modern Indian art. While the couple didn’t have rigid criteria, “Jane was very clear. She said: ‘We buy one work at a time with love, and nothing else matters.”

Yet the two were acutely aware that “We happened to be present in an asset class that was massively undervalued,” he says. “We were not so wealthy that we could have an art collection and other stuff. I was probably the only senior partner at McKinsey who did not own any property. All of it went into art.”

“It’s quite a big decision not to buy a house and to buy more works of art,” he continues, “and I think that was a recognition, particularly in the early years, that this was an historic opportunity.”

It was, at least from a market perspective. De Boer says that he was buying works by Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde, the subject of a 2015 Guggenheim retrospective, for from $8,000 to $10,000 in the mid-1990s. Works by the artist now regularly sell for more than $2 million.

The Market
Most of the de Boers’ auction reflects the “modern” category of Indian art, which didn’t take off until the mid-2000s, says Deepanjana Klein, who specializes in Indian and Southeast Asian art at Christie’s.

That category “is still very young,” Klein says, “and it took its time. By the early 2000s, it was growing stronger, then took a dip in 2008.” (Others have called it a collapse.), The market has since regained strength, driven in large part, Klein says, from a combination of resident and expatriate Indians, the latter residing “in the tri-state and Bay areas,” she says. “Those two groups are the biggest supporters, in terms of collectors.”