Paul Kasmin, a British-born art dealer who established a small gallery empire in New York that was both loyal to an eclectic cohort of living artists and dedicated to presenting a distinctive range of historical material, died on March 23 at his home in Millbrook, N.Y. He was 60.

Kasmin Gallery said the cause was cancer.

Mr. Kasmin was known for his independent eye, his genial optimism and his penchant for a spare, subtly British precision of speech.

In a 2018 video interview, when asked why he was participating in an Armory Show art fair in Manhattan when his own galleries in Chelsea were only about a mile away, he replied, “As long as people go to art fairs and buy things or look at things, I, too, will go to art fairs.”

Over 30 years, Mr. Kasmin built his own version of a mega-gallery, comprising a cluster of exhibition spaces in Manhattan around the intersection of 10th Avenue and West 27 Street. But his was a relatively modest one that lacked the usual blue-chip artists, high-profile auction dealings, global reach, bookstores and so forth that other megas might offer.