24 Facts About Daniel Wildenstein

Daniel Leopold Wildenstein was a French art dealer, historian and owner-breeder of thoroughbred and standardbred race horses.

Daniel Wildenstein was educated at Cours Hattemer and at the University of Paris, graduating in 1938 and going on to study at the Ecole du Louvre.

Daniel Wildenstein first specialised in 18th-century French painting and sculpture, later expanding to Italian, Dutch, Flemish and Spanish art.

Daniel Wildenstein opened a New York gallery in 1903 and one in London in 1925.

In 1940 Daniel Wildenstein went to New York to work for the family firm.

Daniel Wildenstein 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.

Daniel Wildenstein revised and enlarged the catalogues published by his father and began work on his own projects, investing in the acquisition of archival material and establishing the Wildenstein Institute to issue catalogues raisonne which became the authority for authenticating the works of major French artists.

Daniel Wildenstein acted as editor-in-chief of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts from 1963 and in 1971 was elected a member of the Academie des Beaux-Arts.

PaceDaniel Wildenstein was established in 1993 as a joint venture with the Pace Gallery to deal in contemporary art.

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

Daniel Wildenstein's sons sued for defamation but lost the case.

In 1997 the Daniel Wildenstein family was sued in New York by the heirs of Alphonse Kann, a prominent Jewish art collector.

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.

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.

Daniel 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.

Daniel Wildenstein 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.

In 1939, Daniel Wildenstein married Martine Julie Kapferer, the daughter of a wealthy French Jewish family; they had two sons, Alec and Guy Wildenstein.

Daniel Wildenstein fell into a coma and died of cancer in 2001 at the age of 84 in a Paris hospital.

Daniel Wildenstein was survived by his second wife and his two sons from a first marriage.

Guy Daniel Wildenstein assumed responsibility for the art dealership while Alec Daniel Wildenstein inherited control of the family's horse racing and breeding operations.

In 2005 the Court of Appeal in Paris ruled that his widow Sylvia Daniel 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 Daniel Wildenstein had placed two paintings, a Fragonard and a Boucher, with the investment bank Lazard Freres to cover his estate's tax liabilities.

The court ruled that Sylvia Daniel 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".

In 2010 Sylvia Daniel Wildenstein pursued a criminal case alleging that this tax evasion had been ignored by French ministers connected to her stepson Guy Daniel Wildenstein through his involvement with the political party the UMP.