David Findlay Jr., an art dealer who operated the eponymous 57th Street gallery in New York and comes from a noted family of gallery owners, passed away Monday morning in a New Canaan, Connecticut hospital. He was 82.

The cause was a stroke, a representative from the gallery said.

“When you go in there, you think, this is a solid, old — in the best of senses — gallery. They have a steady eye. They know what they’re doing,” Lisa Rosen, an art conservator who works with the gallery, said in a telephone interview. “David was a charming, gracious, lovely guy,” she added.

After 10 years working in his father’s gallery, Findlay Jr. struck out on his own in the Fuller Building in 1982, then moved to the current space on 57th in 2000. He specialized in 19th and 20th century American art, ranging from the Hudson River School and the Ash Can and Stieglitz groups to the Indian Space painters and Abstract Expressionists.

The first of the Findlay clan’s art galleries was founded in Kansas City, Missouri in 1870. In 1936, David. B. Findlay, Findlay Jr.’s father, headed East to open a gallery in New York, while his brother went to Chicago to do the same. Today, Peter Findlay, the deceased’s brother, runs a gallery specializing in Impressionism on 79th Street.

The David Findlay Jr. gallery will continue to operate under the guidance of Louis Newman and Lee Potter Findlay, Findlay Jr.’s daughter.

The gallery is expected to release a statement regarding their founder’s passing this afternoon.