winph Jocelyne Wildenstein, Socialite and Tabloid ‘Catwoman,’ Dies at 79

Jocelyne Wildenstein, the Swiss-born socialite and former wife of Alec Wildenstein, the scion of an art-world dynasty, whose lavish lifestyle, bitter divorce and exotic cosmetic surgeries brought her tabloid fame, died on Tuesday at her home in Paris. She was 79.

The cause was a pulmonary embolism, said Lloyd Klein, her longtime partner.

Mr. Wildenstein was a member of one of the wealthiest families in the French art world, with a vast and mysterious collection of old masters as well as galleries in New York and Tokyo. The only child of a clothier and a lawyer, she counted Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi arms dealer, among her jet-set friends. She was beautiful, athletic and up for adventure; she and Mr. Wildenstein met while hunting game in Africa.

But in 1997, after 19 years of marriage and two children, Mr. Wildenstein wanted to see other people, and they were living apart, he in their limestone townhouse in Manhattan and she at their ranch in Kenya. When Ms. Wildenstein, escorted by two bodyguards, surprised her husband at the townhouse — where he was in bed with his 21-year-old girlfriend — he brandished a gun. The bodyguards called the police, and Mr. Wildenstein spent the night in jail.

Five people were killed in Wajima City, and another in nearby Suzu City, local officials said.

Their acrimonious divorce then played out histrionically in the tabloids, which breathlessly noted the couple’s excesses: Their monthly expenditures of $1 million. The $350,000 Chanel dress she’d bought for a New Year’s Eve party. Her yearly phone bill of $60,000. The $80,000 he reportedly paid a fashion photographer to create a portfolio for a young Russian model with whom he was having an affair. Their East 64th Street townhouse, home to 10 Bonnard paintings, a black leopard, a lynx and a sand shark that lived in a wall-size tank. Their 66,000-acre African ranch and game preserve, where two tigers lived in a bulletproof glass cave overlooking a pool. The his-and-hers plastic surgeries (eye lifts, apparently). And, most notably, her own metamorphosis from a delicate-featured young woman into an otherworldly being with catlike eyes, at a cost estimated to be $2 million.

Tabloids called her “The Catwoman.” “The Bride of Wildenstein,” read a headline in The New York Post. A British paper compared her to a space alien. Mr. Wildenstein complained in court that “her continuing plastic surgery and hair transplants and tattooing” were subjecting him to public ridicule, and he temporarily reduced her monthly allowance to $50,000 from $200,000; a judge ordered it restored, with the stipulation that none of it be spent on surgery.

By 1999, a divorce settlement had been reached. Ms. Wildenstein was widely reported to have been awarded $2.5 billion, the ranch in Africa and $100 million in alimony for 13 years.

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