Provenance: From the Barbara Hu tton collection. BARBARA WOOLTHWORTH HUTTON A WOMAN OF EXTRAVAGANT TASTE Barbara Woolthworth Hutton, America's most famous heiress, lived a gold-plated life. Time magazine once descrihed her as, "a serial story, exciting, enviable, absurd, romantic, unreal.." She embodied great wealth, power and wanton spending. Her every move was exploited in the world press. Her parties, clothes, jewelry and fors - all flaunted during the Depression years -made her the envy of women around the world. At the height of the Depression, it is told that 1,000 guests drank 2,000 hottles of champagne at her debut and received party favors of unset diamonds. Hutton was very generous with her wealth. She was known to frequently loan thousands of dollars worth of jewelry to her domestic help and secretaries so that they could enjoy it and look good on their evenings on the town. But g las, many people took advantage of her kind spirit. "Nothing infuriates me more than rich people who keep saying they're unhappy because they have wealth. I always tell them they should go clown on their knees and thank God they have money," she was once quoted as saying. Hutton moved and married in Europe's and America's most glamorous and aristocratie circles. Her romances with royalty and celebrities were frequent and headline-making. She married seven times. Among her list of husbands was a Russian prince, Danish count, and actor Cary Grant, the only one who did not take advantage of her wealth. Born in 1912, Hutton was the descendant of robber barons. At the tender age of 19, Hutton's grandfather, five-and-dime store magnate Frank Woolworth, left her an astonishing legacy of $25 million and a Fifth Avenue palace in New York. She then acquired a stately English mansion, a palace on the Grand Canal in Venice, a castle in Tangier, and a Japanese-style home in Cuernavaca. According to accounts of her life, Hutton spent her legacy in a decade, which equates to about $250 million by today's standards. She died of a heart attack in 1979 at the age of 66. Literature: An Intinate Portrait of Barbara Hutton, by Philip Van Rensselaer, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, ?1979. Poor Little Ride Girl, by C. David Heyman, published by Pocket Books of New York, ?1984.