J. Paul Getty purchased his first work of art, a painting, in 1931 and, eight years later, his first antiquity. Collector’s Choice: J. Paul Getty and His Antiquities, on view at the Getty Villa in Malibu, thus marked the seventieth anniversary of the initiation of a renowned and still-expanding collection. The exhibition was a natural for the museum, particularly since the construction of the Getty Center has allowed the Villa to devote itself entirely to the art of the ancient world. Where better to think about Getty’s collecting habits than deep inside the building he designed, an environment inspired by a love for the classical Mediterranean world that found its earliest expression in his collecting of antiquities?

The focus here was on objects that Getty personally selected and what they reveal about his taste. With relatively few exceptions, all of the works in the museum’s collections are the gift of J. Paul himself, whether bequeathed from his personal collection or acquired after his death through funds provided by his bequest. I suspect the distinction between the two was not an issue for most, though I did overhear one visitor question the rationale of a special exhibition focusing on the choices of a collector in his own museum. In fact, only eight percent of the museum’s current antiquities collection was acquired by Getty himself and can be said to reflect his personal preferences, and it was from this core that the exhibition was selected by curators Jens Daeher and Laure Marest-Coffey. Modest in size—essentially one gallery—it was rich in insights for those who looked (and read) carefully, and its focus on Getty’s taste, if tangential to the works themselves, was critical to their presence. If in such a context one loses the traditional focus on objects in their own right, one gains a sense of the realities of collecting and of the way objects that, over time, have become iconic, removed from any real-life context, actually changed hands and made their way into private collections and museums.

By 1939, when he made his first antiquities purchase, J. Paul Getty, then 38, had already accrued a fortune in oil and was well on his way to becoming one of the world’s richest men. His first period of serious collecting, which took full advantage of the effect of the Depression on the availability of works of art, was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. When Getty began buying again, Greek and Roman antiquities remained one of his three areas of focus (along with eighteenth-century French decorative arts and Old Master paintings). In 1945, he purchased property in Malibu, subsequently renovating a ranch house for his growing art collection, which, at the time, shared the premises with a small zoo. A second period of collecting, 1949–58, was marked by such prize acquisitions as the Lansdowne Herakles (ca. A.D. 125) and several Elgin marbles. Meanwhile, he opened the Malibu museum to the public in 1954, having added a wing devoted to his antiquities. In 1959, Getty purchased Sutton Place, a grand property in Surrey formerly owned by the Duke of Sutherland, where he would reside for the rest of his life. Undaunted by the distance to Malibu, he continued to oversee his museum, including the construction of a new building—a villa based on the ancient Roman Villa dei Papiri—that opened to the public in 1974, and is the core of the museum that exists today. When Getty died in 1976, never having seen the finished villa, he left his fortune to the museum for the “diffusion of artistic and general knowledge.” Like James Smithson, whose 1829 bequest created the Smithsonian Institution “for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men,” Getty gave his executors the freedom, and its attendant responsibility, to decide how best to manage his estate for the benefit of the public. (One board member at the time described the unanticipated windfall as offering nothing less than an existential challenge.) While the distribution of Getty’s largess continues to be the subject of debate, the collections remain at the institution’s core.

The first antiquity Getty acquired was a terracotta Statuette of a Woman Reclining on a Couch with Erotes, the so-called Tanagra Group, which he purchased at a London auction in 1939. A rather unprepossessing object, it was displayed alongside the Sotheby’s sales catalogue in which Getty penciled notes indicating what he paid (£10) and that he questioned the work’s authenticity, writing in the margin “modern?” (He was right—the sculpture was later declared to be Victorian.) Although a “rather tentative beginning for his antiquities collection,” as the label tactfully stated, the purchase initiated a period of increasing interest in Greco-Roman art, which Getty subsequently pursued, largely in Rome and at nearby archaeological sites.

As one might expect, Collector’s Choice included objects known to have been Getty’s particular favorites, such as a lovely Head of a Young Woman (Athens, ca. 320 B.C.) that reflects his fondness for images of youth and, in his words, “true and lasting beauty.” Other collecting themes emerged: Getty had a sentimental fondness for depictions of children and animals—witness the Gallo-Roman mosaic of Orpheus and Animals (220–225 A.D.), a work he installed on the floor of his first antiquities gallery in Malibu (reducing its size, the label informs us, to make it fit). The Orpheus mosaic had belonged to publishing tycoon and collecting rival William Randolph Hearst, and the exhibition pointed out that provenance often played a role in Getty’s choices. He had a romantic’s attraction to works with a colorful past, particularly those associated with distinguished collectors—from contemporaries such as Hearst to historical figures such as the second-century emperor Hadrian, with whom he identified personally. Getty’s prized Lansdowne Herakles had been unearthed at Hadrian’s Tivoli villa in 1792 by the Marquess of Lansdowne, whose collection, like Hadrian’s before him, was renowned. Perhaps most intriguing in this context is the first-century Roman figure known as the Mazarin Venus. Excavated in 1509, it was admired by Raphael and is thought to have inspired that master’s engraving of the Judgment of Paris. Perhaps as appealing to Getty, the work was believed to have belonged to Louis XIV’s advisor, Cardinal Mazarin, himself a collector of distinction. Although there are now doubts about this association, the sculpture was at one time part of the French royal collections. And, as if this weren’t enough to attract the collector, several indentations on the figure’s back were at one time believed to be gunshot “wounds” sustained during the French Revolution.

The exhibition also included objects formerly owned by members of the eighteenth-century English Society of Dilettanti, an elite group of gentlemen and noblemen (including Lansdowne) dedicated to the study of the art of ancient Greece. The appeal of such a provenance to an American businessman turned English country gentleman is easy to understand. Getty was, in many respects, a self-styled, old-world collector.

The exhibition relied on wall texts and a variety of historical materials to elucidate Getty’s attraction to the objects on view and their place in his collection. Most fascinating were letters that, as is often the case, give a far more intimate sense of the man than anything written about him. It is one thing to know that Getty was a strong-willed, even dictatorial task master, and quite another to read a letter he wrote to his antiquities curator Paul Wescher in 1955, chastising him for what Getty believed (on the basis of documentary evidence that he details) to be the erroneous reconstruction of Venus Crouching at Her Bath and making clear that he expected the situation to be corrected immediately. There were also examples of correspondence with key advisors. Although Getty maintained that he bought what pleased him and believed firmly that a collection should reflect the individual taste of its owner, he relied on specialists such as British Museum curator Bernard Ashmole who counseled him to expand the collection beyond sculpture, which he did. A 1958 letter from Getty to then-acting curator Karl Birkmeyer reflects the collector’s relationship with another key advisor, Jean Charbonneaux, curator of antiquities at the Louvre, whom Getty considered a friend. Respect for the great curator’s knowledge and gratitude for his counsel did not, however, preclude Getty’s competing for a prized object—a bronze statuette of Phrixos or Jason (Roman, first-century B.C.)—that Charbonneaux wanted for the Louvre, and gloating when he succeeded in purchasing it. Clearly, securing an object sought by so distinguished a rival intensified Getty’s pleasure. He subsequently loaned the work to the Louvre, a noblesse-oblige gesture both gracious and, one suspects, calculated to impress.

In some respects the world of the gentleman collector illuminated by Collector’s Choice seems quaintly anachronistic, a reminder of how much simpler, if often destructive, antiquities collecting was in the past, when there was less awareness of and concern about the legal and ethical implications of removing cultural property from its homeland. And the contrast between then and now could hardly be clearer than at the Getty, which has devoted years of effort to reconciling ownership questions and settling claims that, in some cases, have resulted in the repatriation of antiquities from its collection. Although this thorny issue was not addressed directly by the exhibition (aside from a small selection of books in an adjacent reading room), its relevance can hardly be lost on any viewer familiar with the recent history of the institution. In fact, as this review was being written, the highly prized Getty Bronze (Greek, 300–100 B.C.) and the legality of its provenance, currently being debated by an Italian court, were the subject of a Los Angeles Times article (January 14, 2010) that includes mention of documents indicating the collector’s awareness of legal questions about the work, which was purchased the year after his death. Whatever the outcome, the public attention this situation has attracted is not atypical—the Getty’s prominence and wealth seem to assure intense interest and scrutiny.

As the Getty institution has grown in the thirty-three years since its founder’s death, expanding in every aspect from physical premises and collecting priorities to the range of its programs, Getty the man has gradually faded from public consciousness. This is probably inevitable, but it is good to be reminded that this multifaceted institution and the now-vast collections at its core had their start in the personality and taste of a powerful, idiosyncratic, and savvy individual who loved works of art and relished the adventure of collecting.