Huguette Marcelle Clark /uːɡɛt klɑːrk/[3] (June 9, 1906 – May 24, 2011) was an American painter, heiress, and philanthropist, who became well known again late in life as a recluse, living in hospitals for more than 20 years while her various mansions remained unoccupied.

The youngest daughter of Montana senator and industrialist William A. Clark, she spent her early life in Paris before relocating with her family to New York City, where she was educated at the Spence School.

After a short-lived marriage ended in 1930, Clark returned to her residence at 907 Fifth Avenue, a large twelfth-floor apartment that she significantly expanded to occupying two floors.

Clark spent much of her life outside of the public sphere, devoting her time to painting, the arts, and collecting various antiquities, primarily toys and dolls.

The film rights to Empty Mansions were optioned by Fremantle, which is developing a TV series with HBO, director Joe Wright, and screenwriter Ido Fluk.

[20] The same year, Clark agreed to donate $50,000 (equivalent to $887,000 in today's dollars)[21] to excavate a salt pond and create an artificial freshwater lake across from Bellosguardo.

[23] Upon moving back in, Clark modified and expanded the apartment significantly, so that it took up the entire eighth floor of the building, as well as half of the twelfth.

According to architectural historian Andrew Alpern: "If you stood with your back to the fireplace in the library, you could see out to Central Park through the living room window that is almost 110 feet (34 m) away!

"[24] Clark and her mother continued to maintain Bellosguardo, and during the Great Depression had the original home torn down and rebuilt "just to give people jobs.

An acquaintance recalled that Clark "hung out with rich daredevils who drove fast cars and flew rickety planes," but became close friends with Dorn, as both were shy and "hid in the garden.

[24] She occasionally attended Christian Dior fashion shows in New York City, but only to find inspiration for clothing to dress her dolls.

[35] A nurse initially noted in Clark's chart that she behaved "like a homeless person – no clothes, not in touch with the world, had not seen a doctor for 20 years, and threw everyone out of the room.

[36] Her doctor, Henry Singman, "had strongly urged that she go home," but Clark was "perfectly happy, content, to remain in the situation she was in.

"[35] She had regular visitation from private nurses and medical staff throughout the day and was provided meals in the hospital, where her 11th-floor room overlooked Central Park.

[35] There, hospital officials recalled her eccentric interests, noting that she would often change conversational topics to cartoons such as The Smurfs and The Flintstones.

[35] A neurologist visited Clark in 2006, and noted that she was "alert and cheerful, neurologically normal in every way ...  She seemed cute as pie, perfectly content.

Dedman found that caretakers at her three residences had not seen her in decades, and that her palatial estates in Santa Barbara and New Canaan, Connecticut, had lain empty throughout that time, although the houses and their extensive grounds were meticulously maintained by their staff.

Some of the possessions sold include a rare 1709 violin called La Pucelle (or The Virgin)[38] made by Antonio Stradivari, and an 1882 Pierre-Auguste Renoir painting entitled In the Roses.

[22] In September 2010, in a one-paragraph ruling, Judge Laura Visitacion-Lewis turned down a request from a grand-half-nephew and two grand-half-nieces – Ian Devine, Carla Hall Friedman and Karine McCall – to appoint an independent guardian to manage Clark's affairs.

"[26] A portion of the will reads: Given the world we inhabit today, it's hard for most of us to comprehend the choices Mrs. Clark made to sequester herself from all the trappings of wealth.

[51][52] A total of nineteen distant relatives of Clark—the last of whom saw her in 1957, and many of whom never met her—subsequently challenged the second will, citing her "obsession with high end, lifelike French and Japanese dolls, model castles, the Smurfs, her reclusiveness and tendency to give her money freely as evidence of mental illness.

[56] Under an October 2008 deed of gift, Clark agreed to donate the pastel, valued at $10 million, to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, of which Bloch was a major benefactor.

[57] The bulk of Clark's collection of art and antiquities were consigned to go on the auction block at Christie's in June 2014, over three years after her death.