Seventy-seven year old Bernard Goldberg is exiting his second career as an art dealer because, according to Lindsay Pollock on Bloomberg, because of his age. Though some of the stock of his gallery that he is going to be selling at Christie’s this Spring is underwater–meaning he paid more for it than he expects to see in the sale–he judges this a good time to sell:

With the art market still shaky, Goldberg won’t be scoring the sort of coup he did in 1998, when he pulled out of the property market to cash in on high prices. He says he sold his five Manhattan boutique hotels to Credit Suisse First Boston for $139 million.

[…] Like many dealers, Goldberg entered the art business as a collector. He and his late wife, Monica Dennis Goldberg, bought a somber George Bellows in 1968 using $4,000 they had received as wedding gifts. The year he sold his New York properties, he opened his Upper East Side gallery and began selling early 20th- century American art.

Goldberg’s works will be offered in six separate auctions during Christie’s spring and fall sales.

Christie’s press release gives some details on the various works and the sales in which they will appear:

Among the highlights of the collection is Spanish Dancer, 1914 (estimate: $400,000-600,000), an elegant two-foot tall bronze by the French artist Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973) that is signed, numbered and marked with the artist’s thumbprint. It has previously been featured in exhibitions at New York’s Jewish Museum, and retrospectives of the artist’s work at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the National Galerie in Germany. It will be included in Christie’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale in New York on May 4. Additional highlights include La Verseuse, 1916 by Robert Delaunay (estimate: $200,000-300,000) and Dozing Woman, by Gustav Klimt, a work on paper in blue chalk executed circa 1898-1900 (estimate: $60,000-80,000), both of which will be featured in Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale on May 5.

The majority of the Bernard Goldberg Collection – over 70 extraordinary works by artists working in the period from 1900 to 1950 – will be featured in Christie’s sale of Important American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture on May 20. Among the masterworks is a rare oil on canvas by Edward Steichen (1879- 1973) entitled Moonlit Landscape, 1907 (estimate: $300,000-500,000). The dream-like nocturnal landscape is believed

to have been inspired by trips to Alfred Stieglitz’s summer home at Lake George, where Steichen also created some of his most celebrated photographs. This superb painting in tonalist style dates from the period before Steichen

turned away from the medium in order to devote himself entirely to photography, and it remains one of the few examples of his exceptional painting talent that survive to the present day.

With its stylized white roses set against a vibrant red background, Marsden Hartley’s Roses for Seagulls that Lost their Way, 1935-36 (estimate: $300,000-500,000), showcases the artist’s extraordinary skill as a

colorist. Despite the painting’s bright color palette, its meaning is believed to be derived from a more somber incident. In 1936, while Hartley was staying with his friends, the Masons, in Nova Scotia, the family’s two sons

and a cousin drowned during a fierce storm. The tragedy marked Hartley deeply, and the painting, with its delicate white ribbon in the abstracted form of a seagull, is believed to have been painted in elegy to the young

victims.

Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts Sales Press Release (Christie’s)

New York Art Dealer Goldberg to Quit, Sell $10 Million of Art (Bloomberg)