S
otheby's is honored to present a single owner sale of twelve Dutch and Flemish masterpieces--Light and Life: The Lester L. Weindling Collection. Carefully assembled over several decades, the Weindling Collection is comprised of only twelve paintings, each superlative in their respective genres, by the leading masters of the Dutch and Flemish Golden Age. The core of the collection is made up of cabinet scaled landscapes and still lifes, jewels of their type, by storied artists such as Pieter Claesz, Salomon van Ruysdael, Jan van de Cappelle, and David Teniers the Younger. What unites each work in the collection are their pristine condition and best-in-class quality.
By Michael Ellis
I had the privilege of knowing Lester and Liana Weindling for over two decades, first as their private wealth manager at Morgan Stanley and soon as a close friend. Lester was admired not only for his intellect and financial insight, but also for his extraordinary philanthropy. In his later years, he increasingly devoted himself to giving—often quietly, yet with an impact that will resonate for generations. His support extended from major cultural institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Opera to private initiatives that transformed lives and strengthened the arts and broader community. Even in moments of personal loss, his commitment to meaningful giving remained evident; upon Liana’s passing, he memorialized her with a full quarter-page tribute in the New York Times, a gesture reflecting both profound love and enduring dedication to the causes they shared.
While his philanthropic vision defined his later years, Lester was also a consummate collector and host. His dinner parties—whether at their East Hampton home on Spaeth Lane or in their elegant Fifth Avenue co-op—brought together luminaries from art, business, and culture, and occasionally even someone from the West Side, much to the delight of the Upper East Side cognoscenti. Every gathering was impeccably executed by his longtime household staff, and the homes themselves possessed a jewel-box-like quality: furnishings from his childhood home in Berlin intermingled with nineteenth-century French furniture and museum-quality Chinese jade and pottery. To enter Lester’s home was to step into a world where history, art, and conviviality seamlessly coexisted.
Lester’s legacy—embodied by this extraordinary collection of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings and continued on by countless lives he touched—is a testament to a life lived with elegance, curiosity, and unwavering dedication: to family, to friends, to the cultivation and support of the arts, and above all, to philanthropic endeavors, whose profound and lasting impact will continue to benefit society for generations to come.
Read Less
