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8.JEAN PAUL JETTY
INDUSTRIALIST, COLLECTOR AND PATRIARCH OF THE GETTY FAMILY
From: The Joys of Collecting. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust, 2011. First published by Hawthorn Books, Inc., New York, 1965. As I See It: The Autobiography of J. Paul Getty. Rev. ed. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust, 2003. With Ethel Le Vane. Collector's Choice: The Chronicle of an Artistic Odyssey through Europe. London: W.H. Allen, 1955
The American billionaire oil tycoon Jean Paul Getty was also a keen collector of paintings, sculptures and antiquities. His art collection formed the foundation of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California, to which he bequeathed a further $660 million, on his demise. In 1953 he founded the J. Paul Getty Trust, which runs the Museum (I’ve always had an idea at the back of my mind that this little museum might someday belong to the nation’, he wrote short after) - consisting of the Getty Villa in Malibu (a near replica of the Roman Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum, Italy, buried in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D) and the Getty Centre for the History of Art and the Humanities, LA - as well as a number of art education and research facilities including the Getty Foundation, and the Research and Conservation Institute.
Getty’s life is linked to Italy in many ways, not only for his collecting habits but also because in 1973 he refused to pay for his errant grand-son, John Paul Getty III, Italian kidnappers in Italy to save his life. After five months when the gangsters cut off his grandson’s ear and mailed it to a newspaper, Getty reluctantly agree to contribute some cash to a reduced ransom and to lend the balance at an interest rate of 4% to the boy’s parents. After being released JP Getty III continued to live in Rome and to conduct a free-wheeling existence, while his parents suffered many misfortunes (from drug addiction to existential dissatisfaction) and kept strained relationship with JP Getty I. Money can buy art but not happiness indeed.
Getty’s view was that art exercises a civilizing influence in society and that it should be made available to the public for both their education and enjoyment. An Anglophile who spent the last 24 years of his life in England, Getty described his favourite areas of art in his collector's autobiography, The Joys of Collecting (1966): they were ancient Greece sculpture, Renaissance Old Masters, Persian carpets of the 16th century, 18th century furniture and tapestry.
Jean Paul Getty was born December 15, 1892 in Minneapolis to George F. Getty and Sarah C. Macpherson Risher and raised as an only child. He was introduced to the oil business by his lawyer father, who, taken by ‘oil fever’, had moved the family to Oklahoma in 1904. Two years later they settled in Los Angeles.
On summer breaks from school, Paul accompanied his father to the oil fields. At the age of 15, he asked George if he could work for his company, Minnehoma Oil. George agreed but awarded his son no special treatment: Getty worked as a roustabout for $3 a day, 12 hours a shift.
 


























































































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