Until recently, when Susan and Jeffrey Brotman got theirs, Barney Ebsworth had the baby of the "art houses" designed for Seattle collectors by architect Jim Olson. Ebsworth has only been in Seattle full-time for three and a half years.

At the entrance to his modernist palace, between sets of concrete columns, are four large paintings: a can opener about to get started on vegetable soup by Warhol, blasts of red and purple detonated on a white ground by Adolph Gottlieb, a moody mess by Joan Mitchell, and something that knocks me right over, Joseph Stella's 1919 Tree of My Life, a futuristic paradise that brings together Henri Rousseau, Bosch, and that steely Stella of Brooklyn Bridge fame.

Unlike the Wrights (lumber), the Shirleys (Microsoft), and even the Brotmans (Costco), Ebsworth doesn't have deep roots in Seattle. He'd spent his entire 69 years in St. Louis when his wife requested they relocate to Seattle. Two months before the moving trucks arrived, she left him—but Ebsworth followed through anyway.

He'd started a successful travel agency in 1959, gone on to found Royal Cruise Line and Clipper Cruise Line, and finally became a venture capitalist. (In 2004, for instance, the IPO of Build-A-Bear Workshop more than quadrupled his company's investment.)

Last week the Seattle Art Museum announced his decision to bequeath the museum 65 of his early modern American paintings and sculptures. The gift—including Tree of My Life and Hopper's Chop Suey, among other works, as part of a total estimated $1 billion in art given by many donors to SAM (see pg. 15)—is considered a coup. Many thought his holdings would end up at the National Gallery, where he's been a trustee.

The book (half-finished) on Ebsworth's nightstand is Victoria Newhouse's Art and the Power of Placement. His project du jour is commissioning a church by Tadao Ando; it would be the first Ando in the area.

Near the foot of Ebsworth's bed is the first early modern picture he bought, the enchanting Black Houses (The Bleak Houses) by Charles Burchfield. Above the bathtub? Charles Sheeler's Catwalk. Tucked into a recession in one hallway: a stunning little Rauschenberg "combine" prototype, complete with a tube of red paint impaled on a slab of wood, a smattering of tiny hearts and red clippings, and the boyish cursive pencil signature "Bob."

Where an O'Keeffe and a Hartley have already left for SAM's opening show, their hangers remain on the walls. Ebsworth says they remind him of the stars that households like his hung when fathers went to war. "People think I went to museums as a child," he says. "When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was play baseball."

Download this week's In/Visiblepodcast, with painter Zhi Lin, at www.thestranger.com/visualart.