Joys of Collecting

This title offers an insightful and revealing personal account of one man's consuming passion for collecting. In 1965, shortly after founding his namesake museum in Malibu, California, J. Paul Getty penned reminiscence about "the romance and zest – the excitement, suspense, thrills, and triumphs – that make art collecting one of the most exhilarating and satisfying of all human endeavors". Newly republished, this book offers a fascinating portrait of an idiosyncratic and highly personal passion for art – and how his first serious forays into art collecting in the 1930s would turn into a love that would last for more than three decades and end with the foundation of one of the world's finest museums. The text, peppered with revealing anecdotes, encompasses paintings, antiquities, and decorative arts and furniture, with conversational asides discussing Getty's philosophy of collecting. This personal chronicle reads like an intriguing postcard from a vastly different – and increasingly distant – era.