COLUMN ONE : How the Getty Got Van Gogh : Money, opportunity and luck helped the secrecy-shrouded deal for ‘Irises’ come full flower for the nation’s wealthiest museum.

When the airplane passenger with the odd-shaped baggage flew into Los Angeles on March 7, few in the art world had any inkling that a weeks-long drama was about to deliver Vincent van Gogh’s cherished painting “Irises” back to the United States and a new home in the J. Paul Getty Museum.

From a terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, the painting would be driven along the winding Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu, setting in motion the last phase of intricately executed, extraordinarily secret negotiations involving Sotheby’s Inc., the New York auction house, and the nation’s wealthiest museum.

The Getty’s announcement Wednesday that it had acquired “Irises” for an undisclosed price resulted from a propitious confluence of money, opportunity and luck, arts observers and other experts said Thursday. It also involved an unusually powerful cast of characters:

--The Getty, a museum unmatched in financial power and one in a better position than most to acquire the world’s most precious artworks.

--The painting’s owner, Australian entrepreneur Alan Bond, reported to be more than $5 billion in debt and with little power to hold onto the painting as his financial empire crumbled.

--Sotheby’s, which had been blistered by criticism for the way it helped Bond finance the record-breaking, $53.9-million purchase of “Irises” in 1987 and which was apparently eager to broker a deal for the painting and recover money advanced to Bond.

So steeped in secrecy were the negotiations that even now the Getty refuses to disclose most details--even of how the painting actually got to Malibu. (Customs records indicate that “Irises” arrived from an unidentified foreign country in the custody of an airplane passenger, but the U.S. Customs Service, citing privacy laws, would not disclose what airplane company was involved or what country the painting had come from. While Sotheby’s acknowledged that the passenger was one of its agents, the firm refused to identify the agent--even by sex.)

Bond is not talking either. “Watch my lips. There will be no comment,” his representative, Erroll Considine, said when reached by telephone in Perth.

But in interviews this week with experts familiar with the painting, the museum and the deal, an intriguing glimpse of the behind-the-scene maneuvering emerges.

The transaction actually began to take shape several months ago when the Getty started to make discreet inquiries about the 1889 painting.

It was not immediately clear who first contacted whom. Some sources familiar with the negotiations say it was Getty; others maintain that Sotheby’s took the initiative. But whoever happened to make the first call, both sides apparently were thinking in the same direction at almost the same time.

The Getty, the auction house and Bond were soon in intense communication driven by mutual interest in striking a deal. Bond, after rejecting several offers for the painting that reportedly ranged from $30 million to $60 million, is said to have finally become serious about selling the artwork by the end of January, when he asked Sotheby’s to handle the deal.

Diana D. Brooks, president of Sotheby’s Inc., the North American subsidiary of Sotheby’s Holdings, said that once Bond decided to sell, she and her staff envisioned a short list of potential buyers. First on the list was the Getty; she declined to identify other candidates who showed “strong interest,” except to say they were private collectors.

“When we thought of Getty, it was sort of a dream,” Brooks said.

“In the best of all worlds, we thought, who would we love to buy this picture? . . . The Getty seemed an absolutely magical idea. . . . One of the most important aspects for all of us was that (the buyer) was the Getty. That’s why we worked so hard.”

Over a two-week period of conversations in February, Brooks said, Getty emerged as a “very serious candidate” for the purchase, and another four weeks of highly confidential, intricate negotiations began.

“In a situation like this, time is of the essence,” she said. “You don’t want to carry something like this over a long period of time. . . . It was very intense and concentrated (negotiations) over that (six-week) period of time. A lot of man-hours (were involved), I can tell you that.”

Brooks declined to discuss the particulars of the negotiations. But other sources said the Getty had a variety of concerns, including the question of who actually held legal title to “Irises” because the painting sale had been the subject of a highly publicized near-default when Bond was unable to come up with enough cash to make good on his megabid for the work.

During much of the negotiations, the Getty kept the possible transaction quiet even within the museum. Perhaps as few as two museum officials--Director John Walsh and George Goldner, curator of paintings and drawings--even knew the discussions were under way until just a few days before the painting arrived in California.

At the Getty’s request, the painting was shipped to the Malibu compound for examination. It arrived in the company of its courier to a reception by Getty curators, conservators and scholars. Despite the extensive publicity “Irises” had received, Getty curators began completely anew the process of examining the painting to check its condition.

Several technically advanced tests were employed to verify that harmful cleaning techniques had not been used and that the painting had not been retouched. The Getty has one of the most advanced art conservation laboratories in the world.

“When you are paying that kind of money, you have to be sure you’re getting what you’re paying for,” said one top museum director familiar with the Getty’s techniques. “You would deal with the principal scholars. You would X-ray it and literally take it apart in as many ways as you can.

“Van Gogh was always experimenting with different colors and a lot of his colors will have changed over time. That’s always been one of the problems. A lot of times with Van Goghs, you’ll have restorers 20 or 30 years ago trying, in a vain effort, to bring back the original color.”

“You want to satisfy yourself, on your own terms, that you’re getting what you think you are getting,” said another museum expert. “You don’t take anyone else’s word for it.”

To preserve Van Gogh’s canvases, conservators have often relined them, a process that involves attaching a layer of fabric to the back of the painting. The combination of heat and pressure used in this process often flattens the thick paint and texture of Van Gogh’s unique brushwork and deadens the surface of the painting.

Such was the case of “Sunflowers,” a Van Gogh that was sold for $39.9 million earlier in 1987 to Japan’s Yasuda Marine & Fire Insurance Co. At the time, the price made “Sunflowers” the world’s most expensive painting, but art sources said that if the two works were used cars, “Sunflowers” would look like a 1974 Chevrolet in terms of its condition, with “Irises” holding court as an impeccable, low-mileage Rolls-Royce.

“Irises,” Getty’s curators found, suffered from none of the characteristic Van Gogh problems. These experts speculated that, because the painting had been held for so many years by the family of New York philanthropist Joan Whitney Payson, it had benefited from consistency of conservation and even from consistency of the temperature and humidity in the home where it was hung.

The result was that, when the Getty experts finished their evaluation, they pronounced “Irises” perhaps the best-preserved Van Gogh in existence.

“I don’t get the impression they were surprised,” said one top curator of the Getty experts. “They were not expecting otherwise, but it was in simply impeccable condition.”

“It’s as fresh as if it just came out of the studio,” said Andrea Rothe, the Getty’s conservator of paintings. “All the brush strokes are still there.”

The Getty board, which includes a cross-section of some of the most powerful and influential people in Southern California, was not told the deal was being negotiated until the painting arrived in Malibu. Even then, though each board member was invited to view “Irises,” the working arrangement was that Walsh and Goldner disclosed few details of the transaction and the board was asked only to vote to approve the still-secret price.

The board insisted, though, that any whisper of a question over the legal title to the painting be resolved before the deal could be completed--a position seen as necessary because of the unusual circumstances surrounding Bond’s purchase of the work.

Sotheby’s lent Bond about half the purchase price to buy the painting in 1987 and accepted the painting as collateral, a practice that has been widely criticized as artificially inflating the art market. At the time, Bond was one of the wealthiest men in Australia, but his empire soon began to fall apart and by January he was more than $5 billion in debt. To help pay off his loan, Bond consigned a painting by Edouard Manet to the auction house last November and sold it for $14.85 million, but he still owed an undisclosed balance.

When the painting was shown to the museum board, the acquisitions committee and top museum staff members, lit on a wall in a room deep inside the museum, “Irises” caused mouths to drop open. “It just knocks your eyes out,” said one person familiar with reaction to “Irises” within the museum.

Reflecting on his own reaction to “Irises” on Wednesday, Walsh said, “ ‘Irises’ has a power that nobody can miss. No wonder Van Gogh himself picked it to show together with ‘Starry Night’ at the Salon des Artistes Independants in 1889. It’s wonderful that the ‘Irises’ has returned to the United States for good. A picture this important needs a permanent home, and we’re overjoyed that it can be at the Getty.”

Once the Getty board approved the acquisition, museum officials relayed the news to Sotheby’s.

“We were contacted by the Getty after the board meeting (on March 9), and they said they would like to move forward with the acquisition under the terms and conditions” agreed to, Brooks said.

The contract was made final about 8:30 Wednesday morning.

Nationally, museum experts agreed that the Getty may be the only American art institution that, financially and in terms of its curatorial expertise, could have been in a position to move quickly in pursuit of the Van Gogh.

This is largely the result of the Getty’s enormous financial firepower. The J. Paul Getty Trust, which operates the museum, is endowed with more than $3 billion. But also key to the museum’s prowess is Walsh’s ability to sniff out opportunities and move decisively in major acquisitions.

“In almost any major painting that fits within that category (of world-class works), my experience is that 99 times out of 100, the Getty will get first crack at it,” one museum director said.

“I’m not being jealous. You can count your lucky stars. The painting is back in the United States and it’s going to be available to people in California.”

Added New York art dealer Richard L. Feigen, “The Getty was the only buyer for this painting right now.”

Even in the inner circle of the museum community, the price Getty paid for “Irises” remained a secret. One source close to the Getty said the museum paid slightly less than the record auction price, but officials declined publicly to confirm that.

Some art experts suggested that “Irises” had suffered from the bad publicity surrounding its sale and Bond’s financial trouble.

Sotheby’s continues its controversial practice of lending money to potential buyers, but in January the auction house stopped accepting intended purchases as collateral.

The negative publicity may have hurt the painting’s marketability among some collectors and made it difficult to sell to anyone but a leading museum, some art experts said. Sotheby’s, meanwhile, may have been eager to recoup money it lent to Bond to pay for the picture--as well as public relations damage it sustained--and find a home for the painting, which had been stored in an undisclosed location since Bond’s financial problems developed.

“The Getty was in a position to drive a hard bargain,” Feigen said.

Others speculated that the price was close to or slightly above the record auction tag.

“That’s certainly a strikingly important Van Gogh, and if I were a wagering fellow, I’d say the price were $60 million,” publishing magnate and art collector Walter Annenberg, who last year paid $40 million for Picasso’s “Au Lapin Agile,” said from his Palm Springs estate Sunnylands.

“If it had gone for a lesser price, I sense that I would have heard from Sotheby’s myself. You got the picture?”

Those involved in the sale may have been eager to move before the middle of May, when two long-coveted Impressionist paintings are scheduled to go on auction: Van Gogh’s “Portrait of Dr. Gachet,” which will be offered by Christie’s, and “Au Moulin de la Galette” by Pierre Renoir, at Sotheby’s.

If these two works fetch a price similar to the record $53.9 million that “Irises” originally went for, then the unprecedented level to which the art market has soared would be reconfirmed, say those familiar with the trade. If the paintings sell for considerably less, “Irises” presumably would be worth less on the open market.

Whatever the debate about prices and the art market, there is little question about the quality and lasting beauty that “Irises” portrays and the prize it represents for the Getty.

“They were certainly wise to buy it, whatever they paid for it,” Feigen said.

Roger Mandle, deputy director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington and a member of the National Council on the Arts, said, “Most art historians would agree this is one of the great Van Goghs. The quality of the work is not in dispute. We are delighted that one of our sister institutions has secured this great Van Gogh for American consumers.”

“I’m just glad that it’s back in the United States,” said Peter Marzio, director of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Many American museum administrators had feared that the painting might not be viewed in this country for decades after Bond bought it.

Andrew Oliver Jr., director of the museum program of the National Endowment for the Arts, said, “I think it’s a wonderful thing both for the American public and for the painting. And, obviously, for the Getty museum.

“We welcome the ability of American museums to buy works of art on the open market and we certainly support an open market that permits the international movement of art without any trade barriers.

“It’s certainly nice to think that a work of art that was in this country and left this country--and seemed to be leaving for a long time--could come back and, indeed, did come back.”

Times staff writers Suzanne Muchnic and Scott Harris contributed to this story.