Elaine Wynn, the former wife of casino mogul Steve Wynn either wants to show her husband her taste in art or what a divorce settlement must feel like.
In what can only be described as a truly mindblowingly exorbitant purchase, Elaine Wynn, who still controls a 9.7 stake in Wynn Resorts and has an estimated net worth of $1.9 billion according to Forbes, has been identified as the mystery buyer who forked over $142.4 million to buy Francis Bacon’s triptych “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” last November at the a Christie’s New York auction.
The identity of the buyer had been withheld in the two months after the stunning bid. Speculation even identified Elaine’s hubby, himself an avid art collector, as the man behind that phone bid. But according to the New York Times, it wasn’t Steve who bought, but rather Elaine. Hey, at least the last name was right, yes?
To be fair to Elaine, purchases like this aren’t all that surprising for her and her former flame in the name of historical art. She and her former beau actually have quite the collection at their disposal, including masterpieces by Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse, and Edgar Degas. She doesn’t have quite the collection as Steve, who actually once owned Pablo Picasso’s “Le Rêve” until he decided to part ways with it by selling it to hedge fund kajillionaire Steven A. Cohen for a tidy sum of $155 million.
As for Elaine, the Bacon purchase represents her biggest art transaction at a staggering amount that just goes to show how far having close to $2 billion in your bank account will take you. That or she put forth the most expensive drunk dialing experience in the history of drunk dialing.
