Gillian Wilson was one of the most colourful and effective museum curators of her generation. She was essentially self-taught, defying the orthodoxy that you must have at least a degree to be able to approach art professionally, yet she put together a collection of French 17th and 18th-century decorative art for the J. Paul Getty Museum of a quality that equals the Wallace Collection, the Metropolitan Museum, the Louvre and the British royal collection.

She was born in England to Margaret and Philip Wilson in 1941, the youngest of three children. It was a middle-class family, but life became difficult when the father moved out. As a student at Hornsey College of Art, she got the Rolling Stones to perform at the Christmas dance. Fearlessness was one of her characteristics, and she had simply gone up to Mick Jagger when the Stones were playing at the Marquee Club and offered him 15 shillings (75p) a head. They came, played for four hours, and she went on to have a fling with Charlie Watts, the drummer, whom she used to remember fondly.