Rex Nan Kivell

Nan Kivell, Sir Rex de Charembac KCMG (8 April 1898 – 7 June 1977) was a New Zealand-born British art collector.

Nan Kivell was born Reginald Nankivell in Christchurch, New Zealand. He was raised in the home of his maternal grandparents, George and Annie Nankivell, who were sometimes referred to as his parents. He was educated at New Brighton Public School.

Becoming a collector and dealer

As an underage youth and listing his profession as bookbinder, Nan Kivell enlisted with New Zealand Expeditionary Force on 31st May 1916. He served in England (1916-1919) on the staff of No. 1 New Zealand Hospital General Hospital, Brockenhurst, Hampshire (part of his collection of photos was taken here) and at the New Zealand Command Depot, Codford, Wiltshire.On an extended period of leave in England, from October 1917 to May 1918, he began to pursue his growing antiquarian interests. He attributed an early interest in collecting to Sydney Smith, an antiquarian book dealer in Christchurch whom Nan Kivell met while still at school. Nan Kivell was also inspired to read history and geography, especially works on European voyagers in the Pacific

Nan Kivell worked on the La Tene archaeological excavations in Wiltshire and presented the objects he unearthed to the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society Museum in Devizes.

Nan Kivell’s association with the Redfern Gallery began in 1925. It had been founded two years earlier by two wealthy Englishmen and by 1931, Nan Kivell was managing director. He ran the gallery in association with his Australian business partner, Harry Tatlock Miller.

There seems to be little doubt that the Redfern was a significant force in stimulating British conservative taste to embrace modern and new art. Through the Redfern Gallery, Nan Kivell encouraged and helped to establish many British artists including Henry Moore,
Barbara Hepworth and Graham Sutherland. He also helped to introduce a number of important European artists to England such as Bonnard, Soutine, Ernst, Picasso and Vuillard. He gave encouragement to an emerging generation of Australian painters and designers including Sidney Nolan and Loudon Sainthill.

The Rex Nan Kivell Collection

By visiting galleries and becoming familiar with the work of contemporary artists, Nan Kivell began to develop the skills of discrimination and connoisseurship that would mark his future career as both a successful art dealer and collector. His success arose from his taste and judgement in recognising gifted artists before their reputations became widely established.

At the same time, as a private hobby, he began to collect books, paintings, prints, documents, manuscripts and artefacts relating to the history of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.

Originally conceived as the basis of a pictorial history of Australia and New Zealand, Nan Kivell’s collection began to extend beyond the purely pictorial. It came to encompass a whole range of documentary evidence created during the voyages of discovery, exploration and colonisation of the Antipodes in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the material produced as a result of those voyages.

Items in a variety of media from early maps, navigational instruments, etchings and pamphlets to oil paintings, manuscripts and important first editions were collected for the light that they could shed on European activity in the region. In going beyond the portraits of the elite and artworks judged at the time to be aesthetically important, to materials collected for their possible documentary importance, Nan Kivell both anticipated and provided the material for a re-evaluation of the history of the Australian, New Zealand, and Pacific region.

The Rex Nan Kivell Collection also includes Maori ceremonial war cleavers, Maori language publications and manuscripts, emu eggs, scrimshaw, Aboriginal king plates, a compass and sundial and Thomas Baines’ magnificent painted lantern slides of the mid 1850’s. He also collected books, prints, watercolours, photographs, letters and government documents.

Part of the pictorial collection includes works by artists such as S. T. Gill,
George French Angas, Eugene von Guerard, Sydney Parkinson, Nicholas Chevalier, the Port Jackson Painter, Conrad Martens, John Lewin, Joseph Lycett and Augustus Earle.

Fine copies of the most basic early works on Pacific and Australian discovery and settlement such as William Dampier, James Cook, William Bligh, the French explorers, Joseph Banks and Arthur Phillip are to be found in the collection. The collection is especially rich in unusual Bounty items.

By the late 1940’s, Nan Kivell’s collection had become substantial and was housed in various locations around England. In 1946, concerned about the safety and preservation of the collection, Nan Kivell began negotiations with representatives in London of the then Commonwealth National Library, the present day National Library of Australia. He was adamant that the collection should stay together and should also be available for use. In 1949 the first consignment of pictures, books and other material reached Canberra on loan to the Library, which then sought, over a decade, to bring the collection into Australian ownership.

Although Nan Kivell was unfailingly generous in honouring his commitment to allow the Library full use of his collection, he was cautious in defining any agreement concerning its ultimate disposition, or in stating terms of its donation or sale. In 1959, he sold his collection to the Australian government for ₤STG 70,000, a fraction of its true value. This modest price, combined with his later gifts to the NLA, established him as one of the country’s greatest cultural benefactors. Despite a number of invitations, he never visited Australia and never returned to New Zealand. In 1953 he had donated hundreds of contemporary prints by British artists to New Zealand institutions for the fine arts.

Nan Kivell’s collection totals over 15000 items which includes more than 253 oils, 1587 lithographs, 306 aquatints, 780 watercolours, some 5000 books and has exercised a substantial and enduring influence on Australasian historical and artistic scholarship.

In 1992, 32 works from the collection were transferred on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Australia.

On the recommendation of the Australian government, Nan Kivell was appointed C.M.G. in 1966 and knighted in 1976. He died on 7th June 1977 in Paddington, London and was buried in the parish churchyard at West Lavington, Wiltshire.

References

*Pauline Fanning, The Australasian Collection of Mr Rex Nan Kivell in the National Library Australia, Canberra, Australian Library Journal Vol. 11, No.3 July 1962

*Michelle Hetherington, Introduces Paradise Possessed Rex Nan Kivell Collection Exhibition, 6 August 1998 – 7 February 1999

*Susan Shortridge, Paradise Possessed The Rex Nan Kivell Collection , National Library, Australia 1998

*John R. Thompson, " [http:www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A150532b.htm] Nan Kivell, Sir Rex De Charembac (1898-1977)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Online Edition, 2006

External links

* [http://www.nla.gov/apps/picturescatalogue Pictures Collection, National Library of Australia] . Enter Rex Nan Kivell as search terms.

Persondata
NAME = Nan Kivell, Rex de Charembac
ALTERNATIVE NAMES = Nankivell, Reginald
SHORT DESCRIPTION = British/New Zealand art collector
DATE OF BIRTH = 8 April 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH =
DATE OF DEATH = 7 June 1977
PLACE OF DEATH =