Lee Findlay Potter.
Courtesy Wally Findlay Galleries, New York and Palm Beach.

Wally Findlay Galleries, which has been dealing in the art of its day since it opened in 1870, has acquired David Findlay Jr. Gallery, reuniting two branches of the family gallery that parted ways in 1965 under the name Findlay Galleries. The news follows the passing of David Findlay Jr., who died at 82, in 2015.

Wally Wadsworth Findlay began selling the Impressionists as well as American artists like George Caleb Bingham and Frederic Remington, in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1870 under the name City Art Rooms. The gallery branched out to Barbizon painting, Fauvism, and other European styles in the early 20th century.

The gallery later expanded to Chicago, Palm Beach, New York, Paris, and Beverly Hills. In 1982, Lee Findlay Potter joined the family business, and the gallery, which now operates locations in New York and Palm Beach, began offering works by artists ranging from Henri Matisse, Roberto Matta, and Vincent van Gogh to contemporary painters like Isabelle de Ganay and Mary Sipp Green as well as Seung-hee Lee, a Korean-born artist who works principally in ceramics.

Wally Findlay’s younger brother David launched a gallery specializing in American painters in the 1930s, and his son, David Findlay, Jr., set up shop in New York in 1982. The businesses split in 1965, and the new acquisition brings the two family operations under the same roof, at 724 Fifth Avenue, just a stone’s throw from galleries like Mary Boone, Marian Goodman, Marlborough, and Tibor de Nagy.

David Findlay Jr. has represented artists and estates including Chuang Che, Gaston Lachaise, and Steve Wheeler, who will now be represented by Findlay Galleries.