Huguette Clark

Huguette Marcelle Clark ( born June 9, 1906 in Paris, France, † 24 May, 2011 New York, United States) was an American millionaire who was best known for her eccentric behavior.

Life

Huguette Clark came on June 9, 1906 in Paris, the second child of the industrial tycoons William Andrews Clark and his second wife, Anna Eugenia Clark (nee Chapelle ) to the world. Clark was in his lifetime as one of the richest men in the United States. He was also politically active and was 1899-1900 and 1901-1907 Senator for Montana. Her father had married after the death of his first wife, the former nanny of the family. The marriage was probably closed in 1901. Prior to the American public, but it was initially kept secret since the 39 years younger woman was deemed not to them in style. Clark and his wife were able to occur together only in Europe as a couple, which only changed in 1904, when the connection was known, according to press reports in the United States. From the first marriage of her father, she had five siblings, of which at least one died before she was born.

She spent her childhood in 1907 in a splendid villa on Fifth Avenue. She attended the New York Miss Spence's School for Girls. When her sister Andree 1919, only 16 years, died of meningitis, they became the principal heir and now had to take on social responsibilities in place of her sister. In the 1920s, the father of Clark bought a winter residence of the family in Santa Barbara, California, the property Bellosguardo overlooking the Pacific Ocean. After her father's death in 1925 inherited their half-siblings and a fortune of over 300 million U.S. dollars.

At that time, Clark had also reinforced facing the arts and music. For the year 1929 an exhibition of seven of her paintings in Washington Corcoran College of Art and Design is occupied.

In 1928 she married William MacDonald Gower law students, of which they already divorced again in 1930. The marriage remained childless. For the same year she published her last known photo. A year later, an Irish nobleman denied publicly a planned marriage to Clark. She left precipitately a visit to the opera and then took to the death of her mother in 1963 only occasional public appearances true. After she retired completely from public life and lived the next 25 years in an apartment in New York. There they spent the time with her huge doll collection and communicating with visitors often only through locked doors.

Since 1988 she has lived at his own request in hospitals, although they seemed healthy, according to her former domestic workers. There she was known under various names and was cared for by private nurses.

Clark repeatedly donated to charity, but this was mostly known until after her death.

In 2003, she left the Renoir painting Dans les Roses ( Portrait de Madame Léon Clapisson ) at Sotheby's auction house action, which earned revenues of 23.5 million U.S. dollars.

After almost 80 years in which Clark lived extremely withdrawn, there was since the middle of 2010 in the wake of several lawsuits extensive press reports on the eccentric millionaire.

On 24 May 2011 she died at the age of 104 years at New York's Beth Israel Hospital. Two days later she was buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. Clark left a fortune of about $ 500 million. The majority of the assets went to a foundation to promote the arts. It should be used, among other things the development of Bellosguardo in a museum with paintings, musical instruments and rare books of the testatrix. Clark's distant relatives received nothing from the inheritance.