Calouste Gulbenkian

Calouste Gulbenkian
Calouste Gulbenkian
Born	23 March 1869 (1869-03-23) Üsküdar, Ottoman Empire
Died	20 July 1955 (1955-07-21) Lisbon, Portugal
Occupation(s)	Businessman and philanthropist
Spouse	Nevarte Essayan
Children	Nubar Sarkis (b. 1896), Rita Sivarte (b. 1900).
Parent(s)	Sarkis and Dirouhie Gulbenkian.

Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian (Armenian: Գալուստ Սարգիս Կիւլպէնկեան) (23 March 1869–20 July 1955) was an Armenian businessman and philanthropist. He played a major role in making the petroleum reserves of the Middle East available to Western development. By the end of his life he had become one of the world's wealthiest individuals and his art acquisitions considered one of the greatest private collections.

Biography

Calouste Gulbenkian was born in Üsküdar, in Constantinople (now Istanbul), Turkey, the son of an Armenian oil importer/exporter. His father sent him to be educated at King's College London, where he studied petroleum engineering, and then to examine the Russian oil industry at Baku. While still in his twenties he lived in London arranging deals in the oil business. After becoming a naturalized British citizen in 1902, he was involved in arranging the 1907 merger resulting in Royal Dutch/Shell and emerged from that effort as a major shareholder. His habit of retaining five per cent of the shares of the oil companies he developed earned him the nickname "Mr. Five Percent".

In 1912 Gulbenkian was the brain behind the creation of the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC)—a consortium of the largest European oil companies aimed at cooperatively procuring oil exploration and development rights in the Ottoman Empire territory of Iraq, while excluding other interests. A promise of these rights was made to the TPC, but the onset of World War I interrupted their efforts.

During the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire after the war, Iraq came under British mandate. Heated and prolonged negotiations ensued regarding which companies could invest in the Turkish Petroleum Company. The TPC was granted exclusive oil exploration rights to Iraq in 1925. The discovery of a large oil reserve at Baba Gurgur provided the impetus to conclude negotiations and in July 1928 an agreement, called the "Red Line Agreement", was signed which determined which oil companies could invest in TPC and reserved 5% of the shares for Gulbenkian. The name of the company was changed to the Iraq Petroleum Company in 1929. Actually, the Pasha had given him the entire Iraqi oil concession, but he gave the rest away to corporations able to develop the whole, growing wealthy on the remainder. He reputedly said, "Better a small piece of a big pie, than a big piece of a small one."

Gulbenkian amassed a huge fortune and an art collection which he kept in a private museum at his Paris home. His four-storey, three-basement home on Avenue d'Iéna was said to be crammed with art, a situation ameliorated in 1936 when he lent thirty paintings to the British National Gallery and his Egyptian sculpture to the British Museum. He was president of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) from 1930–1932, resigning as a result of a smear campaign by the Soviet Armenian government.

In 1938, before the beginning of the Second World War, Gulbenkian incorporated in Panama a company to hold his assets in the oil industry. It was from this "Participations and Explorations Corporation" which came the name Partex (now called the "Partex Oil and Gas (Holdings) Corporation" and which is now a subsidiary of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation headquartered in Lisbon).

By the outset of the Second World War, he had acquired diplomatic immunity as the Iraqi Minister in Paris and he followed the French government when it fled to Vichy, serving the Pétainist Vichy France regime as its Iranian minister. He left France in late 1942 for Lisbon and lived there until his death in a suite at the luxurious Aviz Hotel. His Armenian wife died in 1952. They had two children, a son Nubar and a daughter Rita, who would become the wife of Iranian diplomat Kevork Loris Essayan.

At the time of his death in 1955, Gulbenkian's fortune was estimated at between US$280 million and US$840 million. After undisclosed sums willed in trust to his descendants, the remainder of his fortune and art collection were willed to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian), with US$300,000–400,000 to be reserved to restore the Cathedral in Echmiadzin, Armenia, when relations with the Soviet Union permitted. The Foundation was to act for charitable, educational, artistic, and scientific purposes, and the named trustees were his long-time friend Baron Radcliffe of Werneth, Lisbon attorney José de Azeredo Perdigão, and his son-in-law Kevork Loris Essayan. The Foundation established the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum (Museu Calouste Gulbenkian) in Lisbon to display his art collection.

Gulbenkian and is inhumed in Châteauneuf.

Published works

• La Transcaucasie et la péninsule d'Apchéron; souvenirs de voyage, Éditeur: Paris, Librairie Hachette, 1891. OCLC 3631961.

See also

• Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings

References

General

• "Calouste Gulbenkian Dies at 86; One of the Richest Men in the World: Oil Financier, Art Collector Lived in Obscurity, Drove in Rented Automobile". The New York Times. July 21, 1955, p. 23. (Accessed via ProQuest Historic Newspapers, New York Times (1857–Current file), Document ID 83363695).
• "Gulbenkian's Will Sets Up Foundation". The New York Times. July 23, 1955, p. 5. (Access via ProQuest Historical Newspapers, New York times (1857–Current file), Document ID 84151580).

Further reading

For detailed background concerning Gulbenkian and the Red Line Agreement controlling Middle East Oil see

• Black, Edwin. Banking on Baghdad: Inside Iraq's 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2004. ISBN 047167186X.

For general background concerning the development of the petroleum industry in the Middle East see

• Blair, John Malcolm. The Control of Oil. New York: Pantheon, 1976. ISBN 0394494709.
• Yergin, Daniel. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. ISBN 0671502484.
• Sampson, Anthony. "The Seven Sisters, the great oil companies and the world they made". New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. ISBN 0671502484.

For Gulbenkian as a collector see

• Azeredo Perdigão, José de, and Ana Lowndes Marques. Calouste Gulbenkian, Collector. Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 1979. OCLC 8196712

External links

• Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
• Armenian General Benevolent Union
• Parc des Enclos