Jocelyne Wildenstein, the Swiss-born socialite and former spouse of Alec Wildenstein, the scion of an art-world dynasty, whose lavish life-style, bitter divorce and unique beauty surgical procedures introduced her tabloid fame, died on Tuesday at her residence in Paris. She was 79.
The trigger was a pulmonary embolism, stated Lloyd Klein, her longtime accomplice.
Mr. Wildenstein was a member of one of many wealthiest households within the French artwork world, with an unlimited and mysterious assortment of previous masters in addition to galleries in New York and Tokyo. The one youngster of a clothier and a lawyer, she counted Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi arms seller, amongst her jet-set pals. She was stunning, athletic and up for journey; she and Mr. Wildenstein met whereas searching sport in Africa.
However in 1997, after 19 years of marriage and two kids, Mr. Wildenstein wished to see different individuals, and so they had been residing aside, he of their limestone townhouse in Manhattan and he or she at their ranch in Kenya. When Ms. Wildenstein, escorted by two bodyguards, shocked her husband on the townhouse — the place he was in mattress together with his 21-year-old girlfriend — he brandished a gun. The bodyguards referred to as the police, and Mr. Wildenstein spent the night time in jail.
Their acrimonious divorce then performed out histrionically within the tabloids, which breathlessly famous the couple’s excesses: Their month-to-month expenditures of $1 million. The $350,000 Chanel gown she’d purchased for a New Yr’s Eve occasion. Her yearly cellphone invoice of $60,000. The $80,000 he reportedly paid a style photographer to create a portfolio for a younger Russian mannequin with whom he was having an affair. Their East sixty fourth Road townhouse, residence to 10 Bonnard work, a black leopard, a lynx and a sand shark that lived in a wall-size tank. Their 66,000-acre African ranch and sport protect, the place two tigers lived in a bulletproof glass cave overlooking a pool. The his-and-hers plastic surgical procedures (eye lifts, apparently). And, most notably, her personal metamorphosis from a delicate-featured younger girl into an otherworldly being with catlike eyes, at a price estimated to be $2 million.
