The Australian art world is in shock after the body of art dealer Tim Klingender was recovered from waters off Sydney’s Watsons Bay on Thursday morning.

NSW police’s Marine Area Command found a man’s body floating among debris at around 10.20am on Thursday, following what is believed to be a boating accident.

PolAir and a rescue squad are continuing to scour the area for a second man, aged 51, who they believe was also on the vessel.

Klingender, a respected expert in First Nations art, was the senior consultant for Australian art at international auction house Sotheby’s, which became Smith & Singer in Australia in 2019.

The company’s co-owner and former curator of Australian art at the National Gallery of Victoria, Geoffrey Smith, worked with Klingender for more than three decades.

Smith described the dealer as extraordinarily committed and passionate.

“He had an unparalleled reputation, knowledge, passion, discernment, and he was absolutely driven in his desire to promote Australian both here and to the rest of the world,” Smith told the Guardian.

From 2019 Klingender oversaw high-profile auctions of First Nations works in the US, establishing Sotheby’s New York’s reputation as the leader in the Indigenous art market outside Australia.

“There are many organisations and auction houses and institutions who may have different parameters in terms of the ethics of collecting,” Smith said, referring to the complex and frequently controversial world of trading First Nations art on the national and international markets.

“But Tim was driven by his own personal ethics, and that’s what you need to do, to get that kind of reputation. He had his own vision and own beliefs, and he lived by them, and those beliefs evolved over the years because he was always learning.”

The University of Melbourne-educated dealer joined Sotheby’s in the early 1990s, rising to the position of international director in Australia.

He established Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Department in 1994, and the company’s Indigenous art department two years later. He was pivotal in bringing First Nations arts to the attention of a global audience and a global market.

Fourteen years ago he also established Sydney-based gallery Tim Klingender Fine Art.