Alec Wildenstein

Alec Wildenstein was one of the two heirs of by far the richest family in the world of art. Until 1997, he was known only within art and racing, where the family were major owners and breeders. But then came a divorce which brought worldwide fascination, largely because of the multiple facelifts undergone by his estranged wife, Jocelyne. The lengthy divorce proceedings also revealed for the first time to the outside world the extent of the family's riches and the total control exercised by Alec's father Daniel over the business, Wildenstein & Co, even though his sons were both in their fifties. In his memoirs, written when he was already over 80, Daniel does not even mention his sons, while his fortune was left in trust not to Alec and his younger brother Guy, but to their children. Daniel nominally relinquished control in 1990. On Daniel Wildenstein's death in 2001, Guy, reckoned to be much the tougher businessman, took control of the family's art business, leaving Alec with their enormous, and historically enormously successful, racing interests, the Ecurie Wildenstein. The family business had been founded by Alec's great-grandfather Nathan, who had fled to Paris from Alsace following the German occupation in 1871. Their fortune was based on the enormous collection of art works they had stored in their vaults. The family were always obsessionally secretive. Alec's first wife, Jocelyne Perisse, came from a Swiss bourgeois background. She was introduced to Alec by the Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. Jocelyne found herself well provided for after the divorce. In 2000 Alec consoled himself by marrying another young Russian-born model, Liouba Stoupakova. Although Georges, Daniel's father, had left France for the United States in 1941, a year after Alec had been born in Marseilles, his business, run by a faithful employee, had continued to trade extremely profitably with the Nazis throughout the war. Alec and Guy sued for defamation in a French court but lost. Alec Wildenstein, art dealer and racehorse owner: born Marseilles, France 5 August 1940; married 1978 Jocelyne Perisse (one son, one daughter; marriage dissolved), 2000 Liouba Stoupakova; died Paris 18 February 2008.