J. Paul Getty

J. Paul Getty, born Jean Paul Getty, was born on December 15, 1892, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to lawyer and oil businessman George Franklin GettyGeorge Franklin GettyGeorge Franklin Getty (1855–1930) was an American lawyer and oil businessman who began investing in Oklahoma oil in 1903 and founded Minnehoma Oil Company; he was the father of oil businessman and art collector J. Paul Getty.Open the full entry (1855–1930) and Sarah Catherine McPherson Risher Getty (1852–1941).⁠[1][2]

In 1905 he moved with his family to Los Angeles. He attended a private military school and the University of Southern California, and from 1909 to 1911 studied at the University of California, Berkeley.⁠[2]

In November 1912 he began studying at Magdalen College, University of Oxford, and in June 1913 received a diploma in politics and economics. He then made a grand tour of Europe and visited parts of the Middle East and North Africa before returning to the United States in September 1914.⁠[2]

In late 1914 he joined his father’s business, spending a year in the Oklahoma oil fields and buying and selling leases for the Tulsa office of Minnehoma Oil Company.⁠[3][2]

Geologists had held that the Stone Bluff pool could not extend farther south, and in late 1915 he set out to prove them wrong. In January 1916 drilling began on the Nancy Taylor lease near Haskell in Muskogee County, with Getty working alongside the crew. The Nancy Taylor No. 1 well produced about 700 barrels a day, and he sold his share for $40,000. The well site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.⁠[3]

In 1916 he announced that he had made his first million dollars from an investment near Stone Bluff, Oklahoma.⁠[2][4]

Getty married and divorced five times, and had five sons with four of his wives.⁠[1][2][5]

He married his first wife, Jeanette Demond (also spelled Demont), in 1923, and they had George F. Getty II; he married Allene Ashby in 1926; he married Adolphine “Fini” Helmle in 1928, and they had Jean Ronald Getty; he married Helen “Ann” Rork in 1932, and they had Eugene Paul (later J. Paul Getty Jr.John Paul Getty Jr.John Paul Getty Jr. (1932–2003), known as Sir Paul Getty, was a son of oil businessman J. Paul Getty and a Britain-based philanthropist and book collector who made large gifts to the National Gallery, the British Film Institute and cricket, and received an honorary KBE in 1986.Open the full entry) and Gordon Peter GettyGordon GettyGordon Getty is an American composer and a son of the oilman J. Paul Getty; as sole trustee of the Sarah C. Getty Trust he sold the trust’s Getty Oil stake to Texaco in 1984, and he has composed operas including Plump Jack and Usher House.Open the full entry; and he married Louise Dudley “Teddy” Lynch in 1939, and they had Timothy Ware Getty, before divorcing in 1958.⁠[2][4]

When his father, George Franklin Getty, died in 1930, he left controlling interest in the family company to Getty’s mother, Sarah.⁠[2]

In 1931 he bought his first notable work of art, a Dutch landscape by Jan van Goyen. He collected art from the 1930s onward, focusing on ancient Greek and Roman sculpture and 18th-century European decorative arts, and also collected European paintings, furniture and 18th-century tapestries.⁠[6][5][7]

In 1934 he forced his mother, Sarah, out of control of the company and gave her an annuity, thereafter heading a large organization spanning oil, transportation, minerals, manufacturing, real estate and agriculture. He came to hold a controlling interest in the Getty Oil Company and in nearly 200 other concerns.⁠[2][1]

In the late 1930s he acquired Tulsa-based Spartan Aviation, which produced military aircraft and trained pilots. During World War II he spent four years in Tulsa supervising the production of aircraft parts at the Spartan Aircraft plant.⁠[3][2]

Starting in 1948, he gave significant pieces from his personal collection to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.⁠[6]

In 1949 he obtained a 60-year oil concession in Saudi Arabia, covering the Saudi portion of the mineral rights in the Neutral Zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The site began producing oil in 1953, sharply increasing his wealth.⁠[1][2][4]

Having lived much of his life in Los Angeles, he left the United States for Europe in 1951 and never returned to California, at first living in hotel suites across Europe.⁠[5][2]

His wealth came mainly from oil, and he later ventured into aerospace, hotels and mobile-home manufacturing.⁠[5]

In 1953 he established the J. Paul Getty Museum Trust (later renamed the J. Paul Getty Trust). In 1954 he converted part of his ranch house in Pacific Palisades (then described as Malibu) into the J. Paul Getty Museum, opening it to the public with limited hours.⁠[8][6]

In 1960 he moved to Sutton Place, a historic 72-room Tudor manor in Surrey about 25 miles southwest of London, where he lived for the rest of his life; his collection was housed at Sutton Place and at the Malibu ranch house.⁠[2][1][7]

In 1963 he published a memoir, My Life and Fortunes.⁠[3]

With his collection outgrowing the ranch house, in 1968 he began planning a larger museum modelled on the Roman Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum, Italy. He closely oversaw its design and construction from England but never saw the museum in person. The museum, now called the Getty Villa, opened to the public in 1974.⁠[6][5][8]

In the early hours of July 10, 1973, his 16-year-old grandson, John Paul Getty IIIJohn Paul Getty IIIJohn Paul Getty III (1956–2011) was a grandson of the oil magnate J. Paul Getty who was kidnapped in Rome in 1973, had his right ear cut off and was freed after his family paid a ransom; he was paralysed by a drug-induced stroke in 1981 and died in England in 2011.Open the full entry, disappeared from Piazza Navona in Rome, and the kidnappers demanded a $17 million ransom. Getty initially refused to pay, saying: “I have 14 other grandchildren – If I pay one penny now, then I’ll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.”⁠[9]

In November 1973 the kidnappers sent the teenager’s severed ear to a local newspaper and lowered the demand to $3.2 million. Getty then agreed to pay about $3 million, of which $2.2 million came from his own pocket, the maximum amount that could be tax-deductible, while the remaining $800,000 was lent to his son J. Paul Getty Jr. to be repaid at 4 percent interest. On December 15, 1973, John Paul Getty III was found at a gas station in the Italian countryside.⁠[9]

Getty died of heart failure at Sutton Place on June 6, 1976, at the age of 83. Having never returned to California after 1951, he was buried on the Getty Villa grounds overlooking the Pacific Ocean.⁠[1][4][8][2]

In his will he left nearly $700 million to the trust for “the diffusion of artistic and general knowledge”; museum officials were surprised to learn that he had left nearly his whole fortune to the museum, making it the world’s wealthiest art museum. He left his son J. Paul Getty Jr. only a nominal sum in the will.⁠[8][5][10]

In 1977 the trust developed its first plan to expand beyond a museum, and in 1981 Harold Williams became the first president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. The trust went on to establish the Getty Research Institute (1982), the Getty Foundation (1984) and the Getty Conservation Institute (1985), began building the Getty Center in 1989 and opened it in Los Angeles in 1997.⁠[8][6][1]

J. Paul Getty Trust: Official website: https://www.getty.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[8]