The battle of the Wildensteins involves two very different protagonists. On the one hand is Guy Wildenstein, 68, a friend of President Sarkozy and patriarch of the world’s most powerful and wealthy art-dealing dynasty.
On the other is Sylvia Wildenstein, 75, his stepmother, born into poverty in Eastern Europe.
Today they are engaged in an epic inheritance struggle for a fortune that includes private jets, yachts, stables, mansions and, above all, an art collection that is the stuff of legend.
Estimated at up to $10 billion (£6 billion), it includes works by Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet, Rembrandt, Cézanne, Fragonnard and Renoir — and Mrs Wildenstein claims that she has been unfairly deprived of her share of it.
Married for 23 years to Daniel Wildenstein, Guy’s father from a first marriage, she was granted a tax-free income of €381,000 (£322,000) a year and a 500 sq metre flat in Paris when he died in 2001.
She wants more — much more — and has spent four years filing lawsuits in the French courts against her stepson in an attempt to obtain half of her late husband’s wealth.
Bitterness and jealousy have accumulated, and there is no sign of a settlement. But one upshot is to shed light on a collection that has been the subject of myth and speculation for decades.
The Wildensteins are famous for their ability to stun art enthusiasts by producing a hidden masterpiece from bank vaults for a sale or exhibition — like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, according to The New York Times.
The last thing the family wanted was for the contents of its vaults — some of which are rumoured to be in a nuclear bunker in New York state’s Catskill mountains — to be divulged.
That is now happening. Take, for example, the latest piece of evidence produced by Maître Claude Dumont-Beghi, Mrs Wildenstein’s lawyer — a list of works in a trust based in the Cayman Islands.
Among them are two Picassos, valued for insurance purposes at €1.6 million and €300,000; a portrait by David, the 18th-century French painter, valued at €5 million, and two paintings by Pierre Bonnard, the Post-Impressionist, each valued at €2.3 million. In the latest writ Mrs Wildenstein, a sprightly woman with thick make-up and platinum-blonde hair, argues that the trust was part of her late husband’s fortune and thus hers by right.
“I was the victim of great injustice,” she said in an interview with The Times in her lawyer’s office in Paris. “And I am determined to win back my rights.”
Born in a corner of the Carpathian Mountains that now belongs to Ukraine, she went on to become a dancer on Broadway and a model in Paris.
On Valentine’s Day in 1964 she met Daniel Wildenstein, the head of the multibillion-dollar art dealership founded by his grandfather, originally a tailor from eastern France, a century earlier. “He invited me for dinner and we never left each other,” she said.
In 2001, a month after her husband’s death, she signed a document to say that she renounced her inheritance in return for the tax-free income and flat near the Bois-de-Boulogne. She says that the document had been drawn up by lawyers representing Guy and Alec Wildenstein, her husband’s sons from his first marriage. “I didn’t know what I was doing. It was all so cruel and so sudden. I didn’t ask any questions. I just signed.”
When she realised that she might have made a mistake, she went to court and won a ruling that cancelled the renunciation and said that she was entitled to half her husband’s fortune.
A second legal dispute ensued over the extent of that fortune. Although the family owns billions, lawyers for Guy — Alec died last year — said that almost all had been placed in trusts, companies and galleries in New York and London.
Mr Wildenstein’s personal wealth amounted to a few millions, they said. Last month La Cour de Cassation, France’s highest court, agreed, putting Mrs Wildenstein back to square one.
She is now trying to prove that the ruling was flawed because trusts such as the one uncovered in the Cayman Islands had been hidden from judges.
Mrs Wildenstein’s refusal to back down promises further hearings and more unwanted publicity for a family that had learnt the value of discretion.
Some of the better-known works in the Wildenstein collection are:
— The Lute Player by Caravaggio, circa 1600. It is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
— Pipe and Glass by Pablo Picasso. A 1918 drawing of Mme Georges, one of the Wildenstein ancestors, who was close to the celebrated artist
— Boulevard de Clichy, 1935, and La Corbeille de Fruits, 1946, by Pierre Bonnard
— Biche forcée effet de neige [doe hunted) by Gistave Courbet, 1889
— Jules David by Jacques Louis David — a portrait of the artist’s son
Source: Times database
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