Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian (; , ; 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 and is credited with being the first person to exploit Iraqi oil. Following the "Red Line Agreement" (said by some accounts to have been drafted by himself), a fixed 5% of the shares of the Turkish Petroleum Company (later renamed the Iraqi Petroleum Company) were to be consistently owned by him, for which he earned the nickname "Mr. Five Per Cent". Gulbenkian travelled extensively and lived in a number of cities including his birth city of Constantinople and later London, Paris, and finally Lisbon.

Throughout his life, Gulbenkian was involved with many philanthropic activities including the establishment of schools, hospitals, and churches. The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, a private foundation based in Portugal, was created in 1956 by his bequest and continues to promote arts, charity, education, and science throughout the world. It is now among the largest foundations in Europe. By the end of his life he had become one of the world's wealthiest people and his art acquisitions one of the greatest private collections.

Biography

Family background

Gulbenkian's family are believed to be descendants of the Rshtunis, a noble Armenian family—Amira—centred on the Lake Van region in the 4th century AD. In the 11th century, the Rshtunis settled in Caesarea (now Kayseri), taking the name Vart Badrik, a Byzantine title. With the arrival of the Ottoman Turks, the Turkish equivalent of the name, Gülbenk, was adopted. The family had established themselves in the town of Talas and lived in the region until the mid-19th century, when they ultimately moved to Constantinople (present day Istanbul). Their property in Talas was ultimately confiscated and is currently owned by the Turkish Government.

Gulbenkian's family established close relations with the House of Osman. By 1860, his father Sarkis Gulbenkian was an Armenian oil importer and exporter already heavily involved in the oil industry. Sarkis was an owner of several oil fields in the Caucasus, mainly in Baku, and was a representative of Alexander Mantashev's oil company. Sarkis Gulbenkian also provided oil to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. During Hagop Pasha's Directorship, and, subsequently, Ministry of the Privy Treasury under Sultan Abdulhamid II in 1879, Sarkis acquired the lucrative collection of taxes for the Privy Purse of Mesopotamia. He was a brilliant student and graduated in 1887 at the age of 18 with a first-class degree in engineering and applied sciences. A year later, he went to Baku to examine the Russian oil industry and to further his knowledge of the oil industry.

Gulbenkian later wrote an article entitled La Transcaucasie et la péninsule d'Apchéron; souvenirs de voyage ("Transcaucasia and the Absheron Peninsula – Memoirs of a Journey") which appeared in the Revue des deux Mondes, a French language monthly literary and cultural affairs magazine. The article described his travels to Baku and the state of the oil industry in the region. It was eventually published as a book in 1891 in Paris.

thumb|150px|left|Gulbenkian in 1889 at the age of 20, newly graduated from King's College

After Hagop Pasha's appointment as the Ottoman Minister of Finance in 1887, he had Calouste prepare an oil survey of Mesopotamia. His policy of retaining five per cent of the shares of the oil companies he developed earned him the nickname "Mr Five Per Cent".

After the royalist countercoup of 1909, Gulbenkian became a financial and economic adviser to the Turkish embassies in London and Paris, and later, chief financial adviser to the Turkish government.

In 1938, before the beginning of World War II, Gulbenkian incorporated a Panamanian company to hold his assets in the oil industry. The collection includes objects from antiquity to the 20th century. Some of the works in the collection were bought during the Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings.

While Gulbenkian's art collection may be found in many museums across the world, most of his art is exhibited at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, Portugal. The museum was founded according to his will, to accommodate and display his collection, now belonging to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Of the roughly 6,000 items in the museum's collections, a selection of around 1,000 is on permanent display.

Philanthropy

Throughout his life, Gulbenkian donated large sums of money to churches, scholarships, schools, and hospitals. Many of his donations were to Armenian foundations and establishments. He required that proceeds from his 5% share of profits from oil should go to Armenian families. He also demanded that 5% of his workers in his oil production for the Iraq Petroleum Company should be of Armenian descent.

thumb|right|[[St Sarkis, Kensington|St Sarkis Armenian Church, Kensington, London, built by Gulbenkian and in the grounds of which he is buried]]

He established and built the St Sarkis Armenian church in Kensington, central London, England, built in 1922–23 as a memorial to his parents, to the design of the architect Arthur Davis. Gulbenkian wanted to provide "spiritual comfort" to the Armenian community and a place of gathering for "dispersed Armenians," according to a message that he wrote to the Catholicos of All Armenians.

In 1929, he was the chief benefactor to the establishment of an extensive library at the St. James Cathedral, the principal church of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The library is called the Gulbenkian Library and contains more than 100,000 books.

Among many of his significant donations was to the Surp Pırgiç Armenian Hospital located in Istanbul. A large property called the Selamet Han was donated to the Surp Pırgiç foundation in 1954. The property was confiscated by the state in 1974, but returned to the foundation in 2011. He also helped establish a nurses' home at the hospital after selling his wife's jewellery.

He was president of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) from 1930 to 1932, resigning as a result of a smear campaign by Soviet Armenia, an Armenian newspaper based in Armenia SSR. He was also a major benefactor of Nubarashen and Nor Kesaria, which were newly founded settlements consisting of refugees from the Armenian genocide.

Later life and death

thumb|Gulbenkian at Les Enclos, his garden retreat in Deauville.

In 1937, Gulbenkian purchased a property near Deauville and called it Les Enclos. It was a place of repose for him. Nobel prize-winning writer and friend Saint-John Perse nicknamed him the Sage of Les Enclos and remarked in a letter to Gulbenkian that Les Enclos was "the cornerstone of your work, because it is the most alive, the most intimate and sensitive, the best guarded secret for your dreams."

By the onset of the Second World War, having acquired diplomatic immunity as the economic adviser of the Persian legation in Paris, he followed the French government when it fled to Vichy, where he became the minister for Iran. In consequence, he was, despite his links to the UK, temporarily declared an enemy alien by the British Government, and his UK oil assets sequestered, though returned with compensation at the end of the war. He left France in late 1942 for Lisbon and lived there until his death, in a suite at the luxurious Aviz Hotel, on 20 July 1955, aged 86.

In 1952 he refused being appointed as Knight Commander, and therefore the possibility of being styled as Sir, to the Order of the British Empire. In this same year his wife Nevarte died in Paris. to be reserved to restore the Etchmiadzin Cathedral, Armenia's mother church, 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 (1896–1993), and Gulbenkian's son-in-law, Kevork Loris Essayan (1897–1981). In Lisbon the foundation established its headquarters and the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum () to display his art collection.

Funding was provided for an Oakley-class lifeboat for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. It was christened Calouste Gulbenkian by his daughter at Weston-super-Mare Lifeboat Station on 17 March 1962 where it served until 1969. It was withdrawn from New Quay Lifeboat Station in 1991 and sold for preservation.

William Saroyan wrote a short story about Gulbenkian in his 1971 book, Letters from 74 rue Taitbout or Don't Go But If You Must Say Hello To Everybody.

The 2025 film The Phoenician Scheme, directed by Wes Anderson, is a dark comedy inspired by the life of Armenian oil tycoon Calouste Gulbenkian, played by Benicio del Toro. The main character’s half brother is also based on Gulbenkian’s son, Nubar Gulbenkian, played by Benedict Cumberbatch.

Published works

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

See also

  • Re Gulbenkian's Settlements
  • Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
  • Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian (CAM)
  • Gulbenkian commission
  • Gulbenkian Park
  • Gulbenkian Orchestra
  • Gulbenkian Science Institute
  • Museum of the Year, formerly the Gulbenkian Prize

Notes

References

Citations

Sources

Further reading

Biography

  • Conlin, Jonathan. Mr Five Per Cent: The Many Lives of Calouste Gulbenkian. London: Profile Books, 2019.

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. .

For Gulbenkian as a collector see

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

Petroleum industry in the Middle East

  • Blair, John Malcolm. The Control of Oil. New York: Pantheon, 1976. .
  • Okumuş, Ali, Osmanlı Coğrafyası'nda Petrol Mücadesi, Kalust S.Gülbenkyan ve Türk Petrol Şirketi. ORDAF. 2015.
  • Yergin, Daniel. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. .
  • Sampson, Anthony. The Seven Sisters: The Great Oil Companies and the World They Made. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. .

Articles

Videos

  • In Memoriam Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian (Part 1), Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
  • Martin Essayan on his great-grandfather: Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian
  • Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian – recollections of his grandson (by Mikhael Essayan)
  • Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, a foundation in the world

Books

  • Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian: The Man and His Work by the Gulbenkian Foundation (full view)
  • The Gulbenkians in Jerusalem by the Gulbenkian Foundation (full view)
  • La Transcaucasie et la péninsule d'Apchéron: souvenirs de voyage by Calouste Gulbenkian (full view; in French)

Official websites

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