I can’t rightly remember when
I met Gillian Wilson, but it had to be around 1970 when she joined the
Metropolitan Museum as a student fellow.
I remember an assured, very opinionated young woman who considered
herself a great expert in French 18th century decorative arts. If she was at
that time or not, she later proved herself to be just that.
In my time in the biz I found
that, particularly in the decorative arts there are cycles of interest so an
entire generation may pass without much interest and then the taste comes back. One individual who continued his interest in
Royal French 18th century furniture (FFF, fine French Furniture in auction
parlance) from the 1930’s till his death in 1976 was J. Paul Getty. But there was a long hiatus in his
acquisitions.
I believe my uncle, Hans
Stiebel, who lived in Paris, got to know Getty in the late 1940’s through an
introduction from the French Rothschilds as an expert they respected in the
field of French decorative arts. According
to my father, Hans and Getty went on shopping trips together and bought, for
instance, the double bureau
dos d'âne (two sided desk) from the Duke of
ArgyIl in Scotland. It is by Bernard von
Risenburgh known by his signature BVRB and is one of the Getty’s prize pieces
in the field.
When we heard that Getty was
buying again we got back in touch. At
that time the Getty Villa in Malibu, today devoted to classical antiquities,
was the entire J. Paul Getty Museum. In 1971 Gillian made her fateful move to
the Getty Museum and she stayed until 2003. She was a formidable force there.
A savvy “oil man”, the story goes, told Paul
Getty not to invest in wells in Libya because the oil fields were going to be nationalized,
saving Getty billions. The “oil man” then
bought a venerable art dealer’s practice and became Getty’s sole agent. That individual then hired a young scholar,
Theodore Dell, who was an expert in French furniture and would much later write
the catalogues for the Frick Collection in New York. Ted highly recommended Gillian to the Oil Man,
and when introduced to Paul Getty, he and Gillian hit it off.
Getty always promised to fly
from his home, Sutton Place, in Guilford, Surrey England to teach a course at
UCLA and visit his museum. He never could get himself to do so and never saw his
museum. Gillian had a model of the Getty
Malibu Villa made for him at Sutton Place and would place tiny models of the
objects she wished to acquire strategically inside the model.
Gillian died at the end of
2019 and last week I went to Malibu for a celebration of her life. For me it was old home week. So many people from my professional past showed
up for the event. They showed slides of
many of her acquisitions including a number that had come through our
hands. One of her favorite pieces (and
mine) was a Planisphere with all its dials and beautiful marquetry. Originally, it not only told the time, but its
various dials showed the
level of scientific knowledge in eighteenth-century France. The only problem
with it was that the works were missing.
Gillian was criticized for the
acquisition but her rational was that it was a unique and important piece of
furniture and the works did not matter
since you rarely see working scientific instruments in a museum.
Among the many speakers were
the current director of the Getty, Timothy Potts and the former director, John
Walsh, known for his expertise in Dutch old master paintings when he had been
curator at the Metropolitan Museum. Walsh had kind words but also talked about
Gillian’s directness. At the time when Gillian applied to the Met for her
fellowship, he was in the position to interview her and he repeated that she
told him he had to hire her. She was no shrinking
violet!
As you probably know, Richard
Meier, the starchitect, built the new Getty Center with his signature white
tiles looking over Los Angeles. What is less well known is that Gillian got the
Getty administration to hire Thierry Despont, a major French architect, just to
design her galleries of French Decorative Arts.
From what I heard at the time Gillian was quite tyrannical about what
she wanted. In fact, the story was told
at her memorial that she wished to have certain walls painted brown but vetoed
all the custom browns that Despont brought to her. Instead, she brought in a shopping bag and
said that was the color she wanted. It
is said that Despont named the color, “shopping bag brown”! here is Gillian in one of those rooms.
One story told which I
actually heard told jokingly by Gillian, herself, was that when trying to
cajole Getty into parting with his money, which he held onto dearly, for each
button she would undo on her blouse she got another $5,000. Knowing Gillian, and having met Getty a
couple of times, it would not surprise me in the least!
Gillian was not spared her
foibles. Most of those stories were
about her stubbornness and argumentative nature. One of my favorite tales came from a good
friend of hers, the Getty conservator of decorative arts and sculpture, Arlen
Heginbotham, who said that Gillian was good training for him, as he now has a
14 year-old daughter who questions everything he says and argues
incessantly. Gillian was always
questioning.
She was also extremely
enthusiastic. Martin Chapman, who was at the Getty but is currently
curator in charge of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture for the Fine Arts
Museums of San Francisco when he was with Gillian leading a group and there
seemed to be a bunch of stragglers.
Gillian turns around and yells, “if you don’t keep up you won’t hear
what I have to say”. Martin catches up
with Gillian and says, “They are not part of our group”!
There are different kinds of
curators. There are scholars who never
wish to take there nose out of an archive or a book, those who specialize in organizing
exhibitions and then there are the acquirers, which is what Gillian was best
known for. Not that Gillian did not also
publish a number of catalogs and also install them beautifully in her
galleries. Without her the J. Paul Getty would not have been the repository of
some of the greatest expressions of 17th and 18th century French art that it is
today.