Collector’s Choice: The Chronicle of an Artistic Odyssey Through Europe.

LE VANE, Ethel and J. Paul Getty.

$1,250.00

Item Number: 139670

London: W.H. Allen, 1955.

First edition of this work by the legendary businessman and collector. Octavo, original cloth, frontispiece, illustrated. Signed by the authors opposite in the year of publication on the half-title page, “J. Paul Getty, Sept. 1955,” and also inscribed by the co-author above, “To the Sprigg’s, with all good wishes from Ethel LeVane (Bunny).” Near fine in a very good dust jacket. Books signed by Getty are rare.

Known largely for his fabled wealth, British American petrol-industrialist J. Paul Getty was highly educated, competent in six languages, a world traveler, and a committed collector of art. He founded Getty Oil Company and in, 1957, Fortune Magazine named him the richest living American. An avid collector of art and antiquities, he established the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1974, a re-creation of the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum on his property in Malibu, California.