ALEC WILDENSTEIN was born into one of the world's most powerful art-dealing dynasties and was a familiar figure in European horseracing. However, to the public he was best known as a protagonist in one of the most lurid divorce actions of recent years.
Much of the family's art collection is said to be housed in a nuclear bunker in the Catskill Mountains in New York state.
As for the divorce, it emerged that his wife, Jocelyne, had embarked on a series of cosmetic procedures to her face in order to please him. The facework went wrong to such an extent that she became known as "the Bride of Wildenstein".
Wildenstein, who has died at 67, was born in Marseilles, the son of Daniel Wildenstein, and educated in New York. The family empire had been founded in Alsace in 1875 by Nathan Wildenstein, a cloth merchant who began to deal in valuable works of art.
His son, Georges, opened a gallery in New York in 1940 and was later to stand accused of profiting from the confusion of the war in Europe. Nathan's grandson, Daniel, expanded the business to include galleries in London and Tokyo.
An art historian who saw part of the collection in 1959 reported "400 Italian primitives, a Fra Angelico, two Botticellis, eight Rembrandts, as many Rubens, three rare Velasquez, nine El Grecos, five Tintorettos (one of which was four metres high), four Titians, 12 Poussins and 79 Fragonards" - and these were just the Old Masters.
Daniel Wildenstein also became a powerful force in horseracing, particularly in France. After his death in 2001 his younger son, Guy, assumed control of the art business, leaving Alec to concentrate on the bloodstock interests.
Success on the track continued, through horses such as Bright Sky, Vallee Enchantee and Westerner. However, like his father, Alec Wildenstein could become somewhat disagreeable. When Vallee Enchantee finished third in the Coronation Cup at Epsom his reaction was not in the best traditions of the turf: "We weren't unlucky - she was ridden by an arsehole who didn't follow instructions," he said, before sacking his jockey. After losing another race, Wildenstein said: "The dope-testing machine must be broken."
In 1978 Wildenstein married the Swiss-born Jocelyne Perisse in Las Vegas. The couple had been introduced by Adnan Khashoggi, the billionaire Saudi arms dealer, who had invited her to stay at his ranch in Kenya. Wildenstein's estate was nearby, and Perisse joined him on a lion hunt. Within a year he proposed.
Their marital base was a five-storey New York townhouse. They also had an apartment in Paris, a Caribbean beach estate, a chateau in France, a house in Lausanne and a 26,000-hectare ranch in Kenya that they turned into an African Versailles, with giraffe, leopard, lion, white rhino and other big game.
Refinements included building 190 kilometres of roads, 55 artificial lakes, a swimming pool with rocks and waterfalls, golf course, racetrack and a tennis court with floodlights so bright it was said they could be seen from most of Kenya - all maintained by 366 staff.
Determined that his wife should always outshine her rivals at Manhattan social events, Wildenstein spent lavishly on her wardrobe and jewellery. She spent $US10 million in one visit to Cartier.
However, Jocelyne Wildenstein said her husband was a difficult man to please. Fearing he was losing interest in her, and calling to mind he liked exotic wild cats, she decided he might find her more attractive if she became "more feline".
Unfortunately her plastic surgery, costing more than $US2 million, had the opposite effect of that intended. The first time Wildenstein saw his newly sculpted wife he was said to have screamed in horror, unable to recognise her.
"She seems to think that you fix a face the same way you fix a house," he said later. But his wife took his reaction to mean she had not gone far enough.
She embarked on a series of cosmetic procedures to "improve" her looks. These included collagen injections to lips, cheeks and chin, at least seven facelifts and drastic eye reconstruction surgery. By the end her skin was stretched so tightly over her face that she could scarcely blink, and her lips were so stuffed with collagen they looked like rubber.
In June 1997 she returned unannounced from Kenya to their New York townhouse to find her husband in bed with a 19-year-old Russian model. As Jocelyne marched into the room, Wildenstein seized a gun and threatened to shoot her. (He later claimed he had thought he was being burgled.)
The rest of their relationship was played out acrimoniously in the courts as Jocelyne sued for divorce on the ground of adultery. She said she needed $US1 million a month to run her household because years of dependence on servants had left her with no idea of how to light a stove, make toast or boil an egg.
She was awarded tens of millions of dollars in the settlement. However, the judge ordered that she pay for further facelifts herself and advised her to buy a microwave.
In 2005 Wildenstein's stepmother Sylvia, a former Israeli army sergeant, said in court that Alec and Guy had cheated her out of her inheritance on the death of their father. The Court of Appeal in Paris ordered the brothers to pay her $US10 million.
Wildenstein, who had cancer, is survived by his second wife, Liouba Stoupakova, whom he married in 2000, and by a son and daughter from his first marriage.
Telegraph, London