Supermarket Heirs Countersue Zeckendorfs Over $5M Painting

The Weis family, majority owners of the Weis Markets grocery chain, has countersued the Zeckendorf family in New York State Supreme Court, disputing the Manhattan developers’ claim that a Pierre Soulages painting sold at Christie’s last fall for $4.955 million was stolen from them decades ago. Jennifer Weis, Colleen Ross Weis and Jonathan Weis, personal representatives of the estate of Patricia R. Weis, filed the counterclaim seeking a court order confirming the estate’s “lawful prior ownership” of the painting and of the sale proceeds, which both sides agreed to let Christie’s hold in escrow pending the outcome.

Why it matters

William Lie Zeckendorf and Arthur W. Zeckendorf, the brothers who co-chair Zeckendorf Development and the Brown Harris Stevens brokerage, sued first, in July, alleging the 1958 Soulages abstraction, “Peinture 161 x 200 cm, 14 novembre 1958,” hung in the Beekman Place apartment of Marion Zeckendorf, William Zeckendorf Sr.‘s second wife, until it was stolen sometime between 1977 and 1980. The family says the work was listed on the London-based Art Loss Register from 2008 to 2025 and that a Weis-supplied invoice showing a 1984 purchase from Niveau Gallery has “multiple inconsistencies” against the gallery’s own invoices on file with the Smithsonian. The Weis estate’s counterclaim, filed this month, rejects what it calls the Zeckendorfs’ “unfounded and moving-target theories” and asks the court to settle title in the estate’s favor. Neither side disputes that the painting sold; the fight is entirely over who is entitled to the money now sitting in escrow, which keeps the litigation a financial and reputational matter for the Zeckendorfs rather than one touching their active development pipeline.

The numbers

The painting hammered at Christie’s for $4 million and closed at $4.955 million with buyer’s premium, against a $5 million to $7 million presale estimate, when it crossed the block Nov. 17, 2025. It was one of 18 works from the Robert F. and Patricia G. Ross Weis collection that Christie’s sold that night as part of an 18-lot group totaling $218 million, against a $183 million presale low estimate, inside the auction house’s wider $690 million 20th-century evening sale. Both families agreed to let the sale proceed rather than withdraw the lot, with the proceeds held in escrow until a judge decides ownership, an arrangement that let a contested $5 million painting move through an evening where the surrounding sale total ran more than 100 times larger.

What’s next

The case proceeds in New York State Supreme Court with title to the escrowed proceeds unresolved; no trial date has been reported. The dispute is a distraction rather than an operating risk for Zeckendorf Development, whose Manhattan pipeline includes 15 Central Park West and 520 Park Avenue, and for Brown Harris Stevens, the brokerage the Zeckendorf brothers co-chair, which is separately fighting a New York court battle with Corcoran and Douglas Elliman over listing data. More on the firm’s other Manhattan projects is tracked on the American Developer’s New York hub.