Weis Family Files Counterclaim in Suit Over $4 M. Pierre Soulages Painting

The three children of Patricia G. Ross Weis and Robert F. Weis filed on Tuesday an answer and counterclaim in a New York court as part of an ongoing suit that aims to establish an ownership claim to a Pierre Soulages painting.

The original lawsuit was first filed in July by members of the Zeckendorf family who allege that the Soulages’s 1958 abstraction Peinture 161 x 200 cm, 14 novembre 1958 was stolen at some point between 1977 and 1980, during which time a trust controlled by the real estate developer family was the painting’s owner.

At the center of both legal filings is which family is entitled to the $4 million hammer price for the Soulages when it sold at Christie’s last November. (The final price, inclusive of buyer’s premium, was $4.955 million against a $5 million to $7 million estimate.) Both parties agreed to let the work’s sale proceed—as opposed to it being withdrawn in advance of the sales—with the funds being held in an escrow account until a court can determine who is legally entitled to the proceeds.

In their response, Jennifer Weis, Colleen Ross Weis, and Jonathan Weis, who are identified as personal representatives of the Estate of Patricia R. Weis, say the estate is seeking those funds and “rejects the unfounded and moving-target theories alleged by the Zeckendorf,” calling them “flatly false.” They ask the court to confirm the estate’s “lawful prior ownership” to the work and to the $4 million held in escrow.

Their filing also characterizes the Zeckendorfs’ original complaint as containing “irresponsible and now-withdrawn allegations” that it alleges were “offered for no purpose other than to garner negative press attention.”

Reached by ARTnews, an attorney for the Zeckendorf family declined to comment.

While both parties agree that Marion Zeckendorf purchased the work in 1959 from the legendary Kootz Gallery, what happened to the work after Marion’s death in 1968 is in dispute. The Zeckendorfs claim that the work, as stipulated by Marion’s will, was to pass into a trust upon the death of her husband William Zeckendorf Sr., which occurred in 1977, and that he never owned the work.

In their complaint, the Weis children claim that “available evidence is to the contrary and overwhelmingly indicates that William Sr. received the Artwork with the knowledge and consent of the family,” adding that the Zeckendorf family has since acknowledged William Sr.’s fourth wife Louise Betterly Malcom allegedly “stole” the work from the Zeckendorf family.

The Weis filing adds, “Indeed, the family’s prior generation took no action to treat the Artwork as stolen for three decades. It is only the current generation that is pretending William Sr.’s receipt of the Artwork was illegitimate.”

Ahead of the painting’s recent sale, Christie’s published a provenance record that stated that the Gimpel and Weitzenhoffer Gallery in New York sold the painting in 1984 to Patricia and Robert Weis, though the provenance does not list the year when Gimpel and Weitzenhoffer either purchased the painting for its inventory or received it as a consignment.

The Weis family’s counterclaim states that Robert Weis purchased the work for $35,000 from the Niveau Gallery in August 1984, which is documented by an invoice signed by Richard Librizzi, an employee of the gallery during that time. The filing characterized it as ”an arms-length transaction” with the price paid as “a fair and reasonable amount for the Artwork in 1984.”

In the original complaint, the Zeckendorf family claimed the Niveau invoice to be “a fabrication.” In the new filing, the Weis family calls that characterization “wholly unfounded and nothing more than incredible deflection.”

Noting that the work had not been “reported to law enforcement as stolen,” did not have an active “insurance claim for the theft or disappearance,” and did not have a listing with the Art Loss Register in 1984, the painting had “no red flags” at the time of the sale and was “obtained [in] good title,” the Weis children say.

The Weis children decided to auction part of their parents’ collection after the death of Patricia in 2024. Christie’s announced the sale in August 2025 for the coming November, with the Zeckendorf family making an ownership claim to the Soulages painting on November 11, less than a week ahead of the sale.

In their filing, the Weis children claim the Zeckendorf family’s story about the transfer of the painting’s as having changed. Per the Weis filing, a letter from the Zeckendorfs’ attorneys on November 11, 2025, said the Soulages was put “a trust for the benefit of William Sr. during his lifetime” and that after his death it “should have passed to another trust for their benefit, the assets of which were distributed to the Zeckendorfs in 1980.” But a letter from February 12, 2026, “conceded” that Marion’s will did allow for William Sr. “to have received title to artworks that Marion had included within her estate ‘as necessary’ for his well-being.”

The February 12 letter also added, according to the counterclaim, that the Zeckendorfs “were told by their parents that Malcom, the fourth wife, stole many personal items from William Sr.’s residence after he died, including a number of silver frames and the Artwork.” The Weis filing adds that the letter “failed to explain, or even address, why no action was taken to report the Artwork as stolen.”

The Art Loss Register did not receive a claim for a Soulages painting titled Peinture 161 x 200 cm, 14 novembre 1958 until 2008, though the registration never included images. In July, ALR director James Ratcliffe told ARTnews that without images “it is difficult to be absolutely certain that the works are one and the same although we worked on that basis.” The ALR registration was terminated in 2025 after the nonprofit did not receive any further information “to substantiate” the ownership claim and received written confirmation that the party that registered the claim “did not wish us to stand in the way of the [Christie’s] sale and understood we would be removing the registration from our database.”

The Weis estate’s counterclaim adds that Marion Zeckendorf had purchased a second Soulages painting, Peinture, 130 x 130 cm, 29 decembre 1958, from the Kootz Gallery, also in 1959. The artist’s catalogue raisonné, per the suit, lists that work as having been sold by Gimpel and Weitzenhoffer after Marion’s ownership of it. The claim alleges that “Marion’s trust documents fail to account for this Second Soulages” and that the “failure to account for the Second Soulages suggests that the trust’s recordkeeping is inaccurate, and the trustees may have confused this Second Soulages, from the same year,” with the Soulages that sold at Christie’s in November.

In a statement to ARTnews, Paul Cossu, a partner at Pryor Cashman, which is representing the Weis children, said, “The Zeckendorfs’ claims against the Weis Estate’s good and lawful title to this artwork and its sale proceeds are baseless. The Estate eagerly looks forward to litigating the unfounded allegations of the Zeckendorfs and proving the Estate’s entitlement to the artwork’s sale proceeds.”