[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/2025_NYR_24254_0008A_003pierre_soulages_peinture_161_x_200_cm_14_novembre_1958043844.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tA Pierre Soulages painting that sold at Christie\u2019s last fall is at the center of a new lawsuit, which alleges that the work was stolen from the plaintiffs\u2019 family decades ago.<\/p>\n
\n\tFiled in New York State Supreme Court on Monday, the suit concerns Soulages\u2019s 1958 abstraction Peinture 161 x 200 cm, 14 novembre 1958<\/em>, which sold for just under $5 million at Christie\u2019s last November during an evening sale of the collection of Patricia G. Ross Weis and Robert F. Weis, who founded the Weis Markets grocery chain.<\/p>\n \n\tThe suit comes from the Zeckendorf family, real estate developers in New York, who allege that the work was stolen between 1977 and 1980 and was listed from 2008 to 2025 on the London-based Art Loss Register. The family is seeking the proceeds from the sale of the artwork. The suit was first reported on by Crain\u2019s New York <\/em>and the Real Deal<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tThe plaintiffs in the lawsuit are William Lie Zeckendorf and Arthur W. Zeckendorf, two co-chairmen of the real estate firm Brown Harris Stevens, as well as James Nicholson and Leslie Nicholson, all of whom are the remaining beneficiaries of the dissolved trust. The defendants in the suit are Jennifer Weis, Collen Ross Weis, and Jonathan Weis, who are each listed as a \u201cpersonal representative of the Estate of Patricia R. Weis.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tA spokesperson from Weis Markets declined to comment on the suit. An attorney for the Zeckendorf family declined to comment further.<\/p>\n \n\tAccording to both the suit and the provenance provided by Christie\u2019s for the sale, the artwork was sold the year after its creation by the legendary Kootz Gallery, which was known for its early support of the Abstract Expressionists, to Marion Zeckendorf (listed as \u201cMme William Zeckendorf, New York\u201d by Christie\u2019s). Marion died in 1968 and, according to the suit, the work was included in the inventory of Marion\u2019s estate.<\/p>\n \n\tIn 1977, the year after the death of her widower, William Zeckendorf Sr., it was distributed to a trust established by Marion\u2019s will. The suit claims that the Soulages was likely stolen in 1977 and found to be missing by 1980, the year that trust was dissolved. The suit adds that the plaintiffs \u201cexercised reasonable due diligence in searching for the Artwork.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tChristie\u2019s provenance records, however, state that the painting passed through the Gimpel and Weitzenhoffer Gallery in New York, and that the gallery sold it to the Weises in 1984. The provenance does not state the year in which Gimpel and Weitzenhoffer received the painting in their inventory or the consignment to sell it.<\/p>\n \n\tThe complaint adds that \u201cprovenance is impossible for multiple reasons\u201d because Marion Zeckendorf did not sell the work prior to her death as it was listed in her estate inventory, adding that neither she nor William Zeckendorf Sr. could not have consigned or sold the work to Gimpel and Weitzenhoffer because they died prior to 1984. It also states that William Zeckendorf Sr. would not have been authorized to sell the work prior to his death \u201cbecause it was not distributed to him by the trustees of the Marion Zeckendorf Trust.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe lawsuit also states that the plaintiffs \u201casserted their claim to the Artwork and demanded its return\u201d ahead of the work\u2019s sale at Christie\u2019s, which the defendants \u201crefused.\u201d Instead of producing an invoice from Gimpel and Weitzenhoffer, the defendants allegedly provided an invoice from Niveau Gallery, dated to 1984, \u201cwhich has multiple inconsistencies with contemporaneous Niveau Gallery invoices on file at the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art and does not evidence any link with a person authorized to transfer title to the Artwork,\u201d according to the suit.<\/p>\n \n\tThe complaint further alleges that the Niveau invoice provided by the defendants is the wrong color, as Niveau Gallery used gray-colored invoices from approximately 1954 to 1961 before switching to blue-colored invoices after 1961. The defendants\u2019 invoice was gray, instead of blue, per the suit, which claims that invoice is \u201ca fabrication.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn a statement sent to ARTnews<\/em>, a Christie\u2019s spokesperson said, \u201cChristie\u2019s was aware of and resolved this issue ahead of the sale. Title of this artwork passed to the buyer, and any remaining financial dispute does not concern Christie\u2019s or its sale.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWhen an artwork\u2019s provenance is disputed ahead of an auction, the artwork is often withdrawn from the sale. Instead, the suit states that both parties \u201cagreed that the auction could proceed while preserving Plaintiffs\u2019 claims, and that sale proceeds would be held in escrow pending resolution of the parties\u2019 dispute.\u201d The plaintiffs state that they learned about the auction of the Soulages work on November 10, seven days before its planned sale at Christie\u2019s.<\/p>\n \n\tThe work hammered at Christie\u2019s for $4 million, with a final sales total of $4,955,000 (including buyer\u2019s premium); it carried a pre-sale estimate of $5 million to $7 million. The 18 lots that sold on November 17 from the Weis collection brought in a total of $218.1 million, well above the $180 million estimated for the 80 lots that family consigned to the auction house.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Art Loss Register confirmed in an email to ARTnews<\/em> that it did have a registration of a Soulages work with the title Peinture 161 x 200 cm, 14 novembre 1958<\/em> in its database that was active from 2008 to 2025. However, the registration did not include images of the artwork, so \u201cit is difficult to be absolutely certain that the works are one and the same although we worked on that basis,\u201d ALR director James Ratcliffe wrote.<\/p>\n \n\tRatcliffe added that the ALR was in touch with the party that registered the stolen work ahead of its sale at Christie\u2019s, and that the organization \u201crequested that he provide us with further information to substantiate his claim against the work as in the absence of this we would not be in a position to maintain the registration. He did not provide any further information, and instead confirmed to us in writing that he did not wish us to stand in the way of the sale and understood we would be removing the registration from our database.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe ALR did remove that Soulages listing from its database and notified Christie\u2019s. \u201cThe registrant was aware of the location of the sale and was free to take any action he deemed appropriate at that stage,\u201d Ratcliffe added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/pierre-soulages-allegedly-stolen-weis-collection-christies-1234792426\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/2025_NYR_24254_0008A_003pierre_soulages_peinture_161_x_200_cm_14_novembre_1958043844.jpg?w=1024″] A Pierre Soulages painting that sold at Christie\u2019s last fall is at the center of a new lawsuit, which alleges that the work was stolen from the plaintiffs\u2019 family decades ago. Filed in New York State Supreme Court on Monday, the suit concerns Soulages\u2019s 1958 abstraction Peinture 161 x 200 cm, 14 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2046680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2046680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2046680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2046680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2046680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}