Daniel Wildenstein

Daniel Leopold Wildenstein (11 September 1917 – 23 October 2001) was a French art dealer, historian and owner-breeder of thoroughbred and standardbred race horses. He was the third member of the family to preside over Wildenstein & Co., one of the most successful and influential art-dealerships of the 20th century. He was once described as "probably the richest and most powerful art dealer on earth."

Early life and education Wildenstein was born in Verrières-le-Buisson, Essonne to Jeanne "Jane" ( Lévy) and Georges Wildenstein. He was educated at Cours Hattemer and at the University of Paris, graduating in 1938 and going on to study at the École du Louvre.

Family art business Wildenstein's grandfather, Nathan Wildenstein, established an art dealership on the Rue La Boétie in Paris after fleeing his native Alsace during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71.

The Wildensteins gained a reputation as shrewd businessmen, stockpiling works to maximise their profits when released onto the market. Nathan built a huge inventory of European Old Master paintings, sculpture, drawings, furniture and decorative objects, to which Daniel's father, Georges, added Impressionist and Postimpressionist works. The secrecy attached to these holdings led to a great deal of interest and speculation in the art world.

Career and publications In 1940 Daniel Wildenstein went to New York to work for the family firm. He had already acted as Group Secretary of the French Pavilion at the World's Fair in 1937 and as exhibitions director at the Chaalis museum and its related Jacquemart-Andre Museum. His five-volume catalogue raisonné of the work of Claude Monet was published between 1976 and 1992. His two-volumes on Édouard Manet appeared in 1976 and 1977, those on Gustave Courbet in 1977 and 1977, and a book on Paul Gauguin in 2001. He acted as editor-in-chief of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts from 1963 and in 1971 was elected a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The collaboration came to an end in 2010.

In 1999 Wildenstein published a series of his interviews entitled Marchand d’Art.

Nazi confiscations Portrait of Alfred Sisley, 1867-68, by Frédéric Bazille, Wildenstein Galleries, Paris, destroyed during World War II. More recently Wildenstein & Co became embroiled in controversies connected with the Nazi confiscation of art works during the Second World War, and with the nature of Georges Wildenstein's relationship with the German regime at that time. In May 2000 the Wildensteins lost a court case they had brought in Paris against the art historian Héctor Feliciano, whose book, The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World's Greatest Works of Art, suggested that although Georges Wildenstein had fled France for America in 1941, the business had continued to trade profitably with the Nazis. Daniel Wildenstein's sons sued for defamation but lost the case.

In 1997 the Wildenstein family was sued in New York by the heirs of Alphonse Kann, a prominent Jewish art collector. They claimed that eight illuminated manuscripts, dating from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries and now in the possession of Wildenstein & Co, had been looted by the Nazis in 1940. The Wildensteins asserted that the books were owned legitimately before the war, that they had been seized from their family safe in October 1940, and that they had then been recovered after the liberation of France. Daniel Wildenstein suggested that inventory markings on the manuscripts apparently connecting them to the Kann collection were of no significance and suggested that claims to ownership made after so long an interval of time had no validity.

Reinach estate In June 2011 Daniel's son, Guy Wildenstein, was charged by the French authorities with concealing art that had been reported as missing or stolen. The police seized 30 artworks from the vault of the Wildenstein Institute, at least 20 of which, including sculptures by the Italian artist Rembrandt Bugatti, two sketches by Edgar Degas and a pastel by Eugène Delacroix, were claimed to have been originally part of the collection of Joseph Reinach. Daniel Wildenstein had acted as executor of the estate of Reinach's daughter in 1972 and had been charged with responsibility for distributing the collection, which was held at the Wildenstein Institute, among the heirs.

Thoroughbred horse racing

Wildenstein was a major figure in European horse racing, a four-time winner of the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe and six times France's leading owner. His horses, many of which he bred, raced under the name of the Allez France Stables and captured many of the most important races in France, the United Kingdom and the United States. His first win in the Arc came with the filly Allez France in 1974. He won again with All Along in 1983, with Sagace the following year and with the colt Peintre Celebre, who broke the course record when winning in 1997. The homebred filly All Along was named horse of the year in France and across the Atlantic, after a series of wins in America followed her victory in the Arc. Among Wildenstein's other successful horses were Pawneese, Madelia, and Flying Water.

Personal life In 1939, Daniel Wildenstein married Martine Julie Kapferer, the daughter of a wealthy French Jewish family; they had two sons, Alec and Guy Wildenstein. The marriage was dissolved, and he subsequently married Sylvia Roth in 1978,

Death and inheritance

Wildenstein fell into a coma and died of cancer in 2001 at the age of 84 in a Paris hospital. He was survived by his second wife and his two sons from a first marriage. Guy Wildenstein assumed responsibility for the art dealership while Alec Wildenstein inherited control of the family's horse racing and breeding operations.

After his death, Wildenstein's fortune became the subject of an extended legal dispute. In 2005 the Court of Appeal in Paris ruled that his widow Sylvia Wildenstein had been deceived into signing away her inheritance by her stepsons, who claimed that she would otherwise face huge tax bills and a possible criminal investigation. In fact Wildenstein had placed two paintings, a Fragonard and a Boucher, with the investment bank Lazard Frères to cover his estate's tax liabilities. The court ruled that Sylvia Wildenstein was entitled to half of her late husband's personal estate, much of which she claimed had disappeared into foreign trusts, and ordered her stepsons to pay 20 million euros as an advance on a fortune described by The New York Times as having been "variously estimated from 43 million to 4 billion euros". Roth died in 2010, but the state pursued a criminal charges. The family was acquitted in 2017 and in 2018 in tax fraud and money-laundering cases brought by the government. In 2021, "France's attorney general and tax authorities brought concerns about the decision to acquit" to the Court of Cassation, with a trial pending in late 2023.