Getty, J. Paul (Jean Paul), 1892-1976

American oil tycoon and art collector Jean Paul Getty was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on December 15, 1892 to George Franklin Getty (1855-1930) and Sarah Catherine McPherson Risher Getty. Around 1906 the Getty family moved to Los Angeles. J. Paul Getty eventually persuaded his father to shift the focus of the family petroleum business to the Los Angeles basin. Beginning in the early 1930s Getty lived in a house he built next to William Randolph Hearst's on the beach in Santa Monica. During World War II he moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma for four years to supervise wartime production of parts for Allied aircraft at his Spartan Aircraft plant. In 1946 he purchased 64 acres in Pacific Palisades, California and renovated the existing hacienda, known as the Ranch House, where he lived until 1951. When Getty departed the United States for Europe in 1951, he kept his Pacific Palisades estate for the display of his art collection and for the possibility of his eventual return. Getty had been collecting art since the 1930s and continued collecting throughout his lifetime. By 1968 his art collection had begun to outgrow the Ranch House and he began planning a new building on the property to properly house these works. He chose to pattern this new museum building after a first-century Roman country house, based primarily on the plans of the ancient Villa dei Papiri near Herculaneum. This museum, often called the Getty Villa, opened to the public on January 16, 1974. J. Paul Getty died in England on June 6, 1976 without ever returning to California. Although he never saw the museum, he is buried at the Getty Villa property, on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

From the description of Collected photographs and postcards of Los Angeles, California and vicinity, ca. 1857-1940. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 78776396

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