A ‘study’ in creepiness
Jeffrey Epstein kept a creepy office at his Upper East Side townhouse that was decorated with a $5.9 million painting of a woman cupping her bare breast — along with a taxidermied tiger and poodle, photos obtained by The Post revealed Thursday.
The pictures show the ostentatious furnishings favored by the convicted pedophile, including a crystal chandelier, a pair of matching candelabra, a carvedwood lacquered sideboard and a massive floral-pattern rug.
The cellphone camera images were snapped by a hedge-fund trader who said he went to the East 71st Street mansion to pitch his investment strategy to Epstein, who died Saturday after apparently hanging himself in jail.
“When I showed up, they took me upstairs — I think by mistake, they thought I was someone else — and they left me,” the trader recalled.
“I just took some pictures because it was so odd.” d.”
The hedge-funder r described the office as “very opulent, all dark burgundies and reds,” adding that the painting “was very interesting” and d obviously painted by y “a decent artist.”
Online records show ow the oil portrait, “Femme me Fatale,” was created ated around 1905 by Dutch- hFrench artist Kees van Dongen and most recently bought by an unidentified bidder at a November 2004 auction at Christie’s. But the most striking items were the taxidermied animals. “The The stuffed toy poodle was really kind of crazy. It wasn’t fake fur at all,” t the trader said. “It looke looked like he needed to be dust dusted.” And the tiger, the trader said, “was huge.” “I don’t think the pictures really giv give proper dimensions,” h he said. “The desk had to be one of the biggest des desks I’ve ever seen, an and that tiger just d dwarfed it.”
The glimpse into the office came a day after a photo surfaced showing the townhouse was decorated with a painting of ex-President Bill Clinton, a onetime Epstein pal, wearing a blue dress and red heels while lounging in a chair in the Oval Office.
The trader said he was ushered out of Epstein’s office after about 10 minutes and brought to a nondescript waiting room before being introduced to the financier.
But while Epstein was “very enthusiastic during the presentation,” he never followed up.
“It makes me think — just purely speculation — that they weren’t really trading, just pretending to trade,” the trader said.