Rex Nan Kivell was born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1898. He arrived in England in 1916 during the First World War with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force where he remained, following his discharge. He worked in London as an art dealer, becoming managing director of the Redfern Gallery in 1931, a position he held until his death, making the gallery one of the most influential in London, presenting some of the best art in Europe.
Art dealer, collector and benefactor, Rex Nan Kivell was born Reginald Nankivell in Christchurch, New Zealand on 8 April 1898. His mother was unmarried and he grew up with his grandparents, whom he sometimes referred to as his parents. Educated at New Brighton Public School and Christchurch Technical College, he became interested in collecting as a child thanks to Sidney Smith, an antiquarian book dealer, and he subsequently worked as a bookbinder. He was also keen on history and geography, especially European exploration in the Pacific.
During the First World War, he enlisted in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in 1916, serving in England for three years. While on leave from October 1917 to May 1918 he pursued his antiquarian interests. After being discharged in 1919, he remained in England and acted as a judge's marshall. He worked on the La Tène archaeological excavations in Wiltshire and in 1930 presented the objects he unearthed to the Devizes (now Wiltshire) Museum. From 1918 he called himself Rex de Charembac Nan Kivell, a name that reflected his new persona, as he discarded his modest antipodean origins to emerge as an up-and-coming gentleman art dealer. Kivell began visiting galleries and exhibitions by contemporary artists, developing his connoisseurship and a taste for the best of modern European art. He also started to collect books, paintings, prints, documents, manuscripts, and artefacts relating to the history of exploration and the early settlement of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific. In 1926 he purchased 161 watercolours by the British travel artist Augustus Earle, eventually amasseing a collection of some 12,000 items, spanning three centuries, which played a major role in Australasian historical and artistic scholarship. In 1925 he joined the Redfern Gallery in London, an association which was to last until his death. By 1931 he was appointed its managing director. He promoted and supported young artists and new ideas about art, running the gallery alongside his Australian business partner, Harry Tatlock Miller. Kivell also moved the business to its present West End location at 20 Cork Street, W1, inaugurating the new premises with an exhibition of work by Richard Eurich. A photograph of Kivell with young Viennese émigré, Ala Story (who worked at the gallery) and Lord Alington at the opening party featured in the Bystander in October 1936. Through his connections with the Parisian art world, Kivell transformed the Redfern into one of the most influential galleries exhibiting and promoting some of the best modern European artists, including Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Chaïm Soutine, Jankel Adler, Francis Bacon, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Paul Nash, Mark Gertler, Victor Pasmore and Graham Sutherland.
Notable early exhibitions included a 1924 mixed show featuring the student work of Moore and Hepworth and, in 1929, the First Exhibition of British Linocuts by the Grosvenor School, including prints by Sybil Andrews, Cyril Edward Power, and their teacher, Claude Flight. Kivell also encouraged many Australian artists, including Sidney Nolan, to exhibit in England. By 1948, the National Library of Australia had agreed to accept part of Kivell’s collection. Furthermore, in 1953 he donated a tranche of prints by artists including Graham Sutherland, Ceri Richards, Claude Flight and Sybil Andrews, to art galleries in each of the four main cities of New Zealand. At the time, they received little attention, and it was only in the 1990s, when modernist prints from the 1930s had become highly sought after, that they began being considered as proper works of art. In 1958 the Times published Kivell’s letter to the editor regarding the decision of the Government of New Zealand to ban imports of all works of art including loan exhibitions. Kivell noted that ‘Being the director of a gallery specialising in contemporary paintings, I know the absolute necessity in acquainting the public with every new change in idiom, and that pictures must be seen to appreciate the rapidly changing theories and emotions of cultural development (The Times 1958, p. 9).
Upon the recommendation of the Australian government, Kivell was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1966 and knighted for his services to the arts in 1976. He never returned to New Zealand nor visited the object of his collecting passion – Australia. One of his last significant gifts was to HM Queen Elizabeth II, to whom he bequeathed a collection of 127 natural history watercolours assembled by Cassiano dal Pozzo as part of his ‘Museo Cartaceo’ and painted in Rome by Vincenzo Leonardi in the 1630s. Rex Nan Kivell died in Paddington, London, England in 1977. The following year, part of his collection was offered at auction by Sotheby’s. The National Library of Australia holds thousands of items in the Rex Nan Kivell Collection while four photographic portraits of Kivell by émigré photographer, Ida Kar, are held in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Rex Nan Kivell]
Publications related to [Rex Nan Kivell] in the Ben Uri Library