Casino magnate's £25m art spree

This Renoir masterpiece was one of Mr Wynn's purchases

A US billionaire casino tycoon has spent more than $40m (£25m) in 24 hours on two art treasures.

Steve Wynn paid $17.4m (£10.8m) for a Cézanne self-portrait - a day after splashing out $23.5m (£14.5m) on a Renoir masterpiece.

His purchases were the two most prized paintings on sale this week at rival auction houses Christie's and Sotheby's.

Mr Wynn, 60, one of the biggest private art collectors in the US, plans to hang the paintings at a casino he is opening in Las Vegas.

He is the former owner of the Belagio resort hotel in Las Vegas, which he sold to gaming company MGM Grand for £5bn nearly three years ago.

He then bought the historic Las Vegas casino the Desert Inn, which he plans to demolish and replace with a 59-storey hotel and casino called Le Reve.

His first purchase on Tuesday was Renoir's In The Roses (portrait of Madame Leon Clapisson), bought at Sotheby's in Las Vegas.

Less than 24 hours later he snapped up the Cézanne self-portrait, a work dated about 1895.

The pictures will hang in a temporary gallery until Le Reve opens in 2005.