A Triumph of Collecting

In 1982, J. Paul Getty’s surprise bequest to the small museum in Malibu that bore his name became final. The staggering original sum of $700 million had swelled during six years of complex litigation following his death to a stratospheric $1.2 billion, making the Getty the richest museum in the known universe.

It’s a good thing, too. Money might not buy happiness, but it sure can buy a lot of really good art. And at the Getty, really good art was in awfully short supply.

The old man was notoriously tight. Recall the famous (and true) penny-pinching story of the pay telephone he installed for house guests at Sutton Place, the baronial English estate where he lived in rarefied splendor. Getty could (and did) pay top dollar for art when he wanted to, but judging from the middling collection in Malibu, he didn’t want to very often.

Yes, there were individual high points and even areas of unusually strong concentration, a few attaining nosebleed altitude. A unique double-sided desk by the great cabinetmaker Bernard van Risenburgh might be happily encountered among the generally fine collection of 17th and 18th century French decorative arts; the refined 4th century BC bronze of a victorious young athlete, or the famous 2nd century Lansdowne Herakles, his heroic marble bulk gazing introspectively, might stand out among the Greek and Roman antiquities, which were always Getty’s first love. But they were exceptions. Mostly his collection was an ad hoc jumble of musty old stuff, chock-a-block with the mediocre, the leftover and the dubiously attributed--especially when it came to European paintings.

But now, as the museum opens its new hilltop home at the Getty Center, those days of so-so art and scrupulous parsimony are over. Finished, kaput, history. The collection has been transformed. What a difference 15 years have made.

Not to mention $4.5 billion, the current value of the oil tycoon’s munificent bequest. No one will say exactly how many hundreds of millions the Getty has spent buying art since 1982, but hefty income from the huge endowment has provided the financial wherewithal essential to the task. The curatorial staff has provided the smarts--an ingredient often harder to come by than money.

Not that it’s been easy, despite the requisite cash and cranial power. As a time to begin serious shopping for art, 1982 is late in the modern history of collecting. Very, very late. Masterworks aren’t languishing in gallery inventories, waiting for money to make their acquaintance. Most of the great stuff is already otherwise occupied. The difficulty just serves to make the Getty’s achievement all the more impressive. During a narrow sliver of time, it’s become the home of:

* An unparalleled collection of 17th and 18th century French decorative arts, whose proud billing as a virtual museum-within-a-museum is no idle boast.

* A collection of some 160 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, whose awesome quality puts the Getty in the rarefied league of New York’s Morgan Library and Baltimore’s Walters Art Gallery as the best places in America to see paintings from the European Middle Ages (J. Pierpont Morgan started his collection in the late 1880s, Henry Walters in 1898).

* A virtually unrivaled photography collection that reaches immense proportions, numbering somewhere in excess of 65,000 camera images, making L.A. the world’s richest center for photographic scholarship.

More remarkably, two of these three triumphs represent areas new to the museum. J. Paul Getty had originally formed a three-part collection focused on Classical antiquities, French furniture and--least impressively--European paintings. In the 1980s, those three were expanded to seven. In addition to photographs and manuscripts, the Getty also began to acquire European sculpture and drawings.

One wise directive the museum gave itself as a speedy way to grow its holdings was to “collect collections.” It began with a headline-making coup: In 1983, Germany’s incomparable Ludwig collection of 144 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts was swallowed whole. A year later, not one but six incomparable private photography collections, including those amassed by Arnold Crane and Samuel Wagstaff, brought some 26,000 works to the museum in one fell swoop.

Despite the headlines, though, the routine public profile of these acquisitions is low. For on any given day, visitors only get to see a tiny portion of them. The gorgeous illuminations in manuscripts may be the only great legacy left of painting from the Middle Ages, murals having long since faded or been destroyed. But the format of a book, which has the virtue of keeping colors as astonishingly fresh as if they were painted yesterday, has the disadvantage of limiting to one or two the number of illuminations that can be shown at once. And even the Getty can’t display 65,000 photographs.

Conservation requirements also dictate that a third new area of the Getty’s collection--drawings from the Renaissance to the 19th century, which now number more than 500 excellent examples--must necessarily hide much of its considerable light under a bushel. But what a light! Michelangelo’s monumental chalk study of the Holy Family; Martin Schongauer’s large and luscious watercolor of peonies, perhaps the oldest surviving plant study from the Northern Renaissance; Albrecht Durer’s astonishingly empathetic 1505 depiction of a giant stag beetle (bought from actor Alain Delon); Vincent van Gogh’s intense ink portrait of his postman-friend, Joseph Roulin, literally knitted together from a welter of hatched lines--drawing doesn’t get better than this.

Yet these three powerful collections are like the proverbial iceberg, submerged in all their splendid bulk beneath the radiant tip of the Getty’s galleries. There, up above the water line, painting rules. Michelangelo, who regarded himself as a sculptor first, a painter second, would have scoffed at the modern prejudice that painting is the queen of Western visual art. But that’s life: You can pretty well bet that the museum will be measured first by the strength of its European paintings collection.

Picture for picture, the greatest painting collection in town--indeed, in the Western United States--will still be found at Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum, not the Getty. In fact, Simon’s was one great collection the Getty tried--but failed--to collect. (Baron Thyssen’s, now part of Madrid’s Prado Museum, was another.) Still, if there’s one area of his original holding that would likely cause old J. Paul’s jaw to go slack, it’s the utter transformation wrought in European paintings. Consider: Of the 60 or 70 finest works on view, only about a dozen were in the Getty collection before 1982.

Ironically, among those few is Thomas Gainsborough’s 1778 portrait of James Christie--the man who founded the British auction house that still bears his name, and where the Getty has dropped assorted millions buying art in recent years (Michelangelo’s monumental drawing among them). The European painting collection is not now--and never will be--encyclopedic, but to get some sense of what’s been accomplished in a brief but busy time, imagine walking into a room of Italian Renaissance paintings. One end wall is anchored by Fra Bartolommeo’s ethereal Florentine panel, “The Rest on the Flight Into Egypt” (1509), the other by Jacopo Pontormo’s mesmerizing portrait of an unidentified young soldier, from around 1529.

These are two of the most important Italian Renaissance paintings in America. Like 10 of the other 13 lovely pictures in the room--by Andrea Mantegna, Correggio, Giulio Romano, Sebastiano del Piombo, etc.--they were bought in the last 15 years.

Now imagine the other end of the European spectrum: Modern art of the late 19th century. The whole genre of Expressionist painting can be traced to James Ensor’s monumental yet deeply personal 1888 premonition of an apocalyptic spectacle, “Christ’s Entry Into Brussels in 1889,” making it one of the pivotal Modern paintings in the world. It dominates a Getty gallery, in the formidable company of stellar examples by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, Munch, Pissarro, Rousseau, Van Gogh--every one, like the Ensor, a post-1982 purchase. Who would ever have thought the Getty would be an essential destination for fans of Modern painting?

Great traditions are even newly suggested in eye-popping examples. A rationalist 17th century religious painting by Nicolas Poussin was recently joined by a superb example of his imaginary landscapes. Follow this French Classical thread to three works by Jacques-Louis David: one Neoclassical mythological picture and two portraits (one austere, one tender). Then go to the big, powerful 1893 still life by Paul Cezanne, who worshiped at Poussin’s altar. The brief journey is revealing, provocative, amazing.

When the museum opened its faux-Roman villa in Malibu in 1974, the painting collection’s highlights included pictures by Raphael, Rubens and a few others. One critic witheringly (and accurately) described them as providing “striking monuments to the second rate.” As the Getty Center opens now, none of those pictures are anywhere to be seen--demoted, re-attributed, surpassed by scores of better examples. In fact, it’s as an assembly of individual works of distinction that the painting collection impresses. In addition to those previously cited, there are enviable pictures by--hang on--Simone Martini, Bernardo Daddi, Fra Angelico, Dosso Dossi, Titian, Mabuse, Dieric Bouts, Jan Brueghel, Domenico Fetti, Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Jan van de Cappelle, Philips Koninck, Jan Steen, Canaletto, Caspar David Friedrich, Gericault, Millet, Turner, Degas and more.

And there’s European sculpture, too. This new collecting area has proceeded discreetly, so most visitors will likely be taken by complete surprise. For instance, everyone knows the museum was unable to get a British export license to acquire Antonio Canova’s Neoclassical masterpiece, “The Three Graces” (1815-1819); but, who knew they had quietly acquired “Apollo Crowning Himself” (1781-82), thought to be Canova’s first Neoclassical work? And the knockout lifesize Spanish polychrome sculpture of St. Gines de la Jara by Luisa Roldan is exactly the kind of work that gives a collection character--an unexpected masterpiece from a surprising place by a little-known artist--a woman, too, which is a rarity.

Visitors to Brentwood won’t see the Getty’s antiquities, except for a few great examples in a special opening show, since the Malibu villa will become a center devoted to classical art when renovation there is completed in about four years. But if the collection is the heart and soul of any museum, the Getty’s specialized ensemble now takes its rightful place among the most vital in the world. And make no mistake: It’s only going to keep getting better.

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Critic’s Tour

The Getty Museum’s collection is not an encyclopedic survey of Western art, but you can work your way from ancient Greece to early California by sampling some extraordinary objects. Here’s one way:

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1. Unknown, “Cult Statue of a Goddess (perhaps Aphrodite)” (425-400 BC), painted limestone and marble. Unearthed in Italy, this commanding, 7-foot-tall Greek goddess is the only complete example of its type to survive from antiquity.

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2. Unknown, “Helmarshausen Gospels” (circa 1120-40), illuminated manuscript. One of 144 manuscripts bought en masse from the famed Ludwig Collection, it helps make the Getty one of the great repositories of medieval art.

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3. Unknown, “Stammheim Missal” (circa 1160), illuminated manuscript. Made for a Benedictine monastery in Hildesheim, Germany, and acquired in April, it’s the textbook example of Romanesque painting.

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4. Fra Bartolommeo, “The Rest on the Flight Into Egypt With St. John the Baptist” (circa 1509), oil on panel. Amazingly, the British government gave an export license to this exquisite example of High Renaissance painting, allowing the Getty to buy it last year.

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5. Michelangelo Buonarroti, “The Holy Family With the Infant St. John the Baptist” (circa 1530), chalk and ink. Michelangelo made the refinements of drawing a symbol of the artist as an intellectual, not merely a craftsman.

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6. Gianlorenzo Bernini, “Boy With a Dragon” (1614), marble. Bernini was born in 1598; what were you doing at age 16?

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7. Rembrandt van Rijn, “Nude Woman With a Snake” (1637), chalk. Perhaps depicting Eve or Cleopatra, this is the first Old Master drawing the Getty acquired (in 1981).

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8. Luisa Roldan, “St. Gines de la Jara” (1692), polychromed wood. Acquired as a work by Jose Caro, the life-size devotional figure is now attributed to La Roldana, court sculptor to Spain’s Charles II and one of the few women sculptors of her day.

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9. Rousseau de la Rottiere, after designs by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, “Panelled Interior” (1788-89), painted and gilded oak. A perfect room.

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10. James Ensor, “Christ’s Entry Into Brussels in 1889” (1888), oil on canvas. Simply put, the history of Expressionist painting begins here.

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11. Edward Weston, “Charis Nude” (1936), gelatin silver print. Weston (1886-1958), who lived in Glendale early in his career, was the first great Modern artist to come to maturity in Los Angeles.