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.
Although he had been working in a tailor's shop when he began to trade in art he proved extremely successful, selling to European collectors such as Edmond James de Rothschild and later to Americans such as J. P. Morgan, Henry Clay Frick, and to the Kress, Rockefeller, and Mellon families.
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.
[4] In 1978 Wildenstein & Co's New York storeroom included 20 pictures by Renoir, 25 Courbets, 10 Van Goghs, 10 Cézannes, 10 Gauguins, 2 Botticellis, 8 Rembrandts, 8 Rubens, 9 El Grecos and 5 Tintorettos among a total inventory of 10,000 paintings.
[5] Wildenstein & Co reopened in Paris after the Second World War but ended its operations there in the early 1960s after the French minister of culture, Andre Malraux, publicly accused Georges Wildenstein of bribing a ministry official to authorize the export and sale abroad of Georges de La Tour's painting The Fortune Teller.
[1][13][14][15] 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.
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.
[1][3][13][15][16][17] 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.
His criticism of Pat Eddery's riding of Buckskin in the Ascot Gold Cup of 1978 caused the trainer Peter Walwyn to ask Wildenstein to remove his horses from his yard.
[28] 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.
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.
