Robert Sivell 1888-1958

Robert Sivell ARSA, RSA was born in Kirkcudbright, Scotland in 1888. He attended Glasgow School of Art in 1908, but due to financial pressures left in 1910 During the First World War worked for a time as an engineer and served in the Merchant Navy. He returned Kirkcudbright in 1920s and married local girl, Isobel Sayers. Sivell was a founder member of the Glasgow Society of Painters and Sculptors (with James Cowie and Archibald McGlashan) - A society formed to rival the Royal Glasgow Institute. Exhibitions took place at the McLellan Galleries, Glasgow. In 1936, Sivell became an ARSA (Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy) and a member of the RSA (Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh) in 1943 From 1942 to 1954 He was head of drawing and painting at Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen, were Alberto Morrocco (1917-1998) was a student. During the second World War, Sivell was was a member of the War Artists Advisory Committee One of Sivell's most notable works is a series of murals that grace the Aberdeen University student union on Gallowgate. The murals started in 1938 and completed a few years later. Some of the completed studies for the mural are now in the possession of the Aberdeen Art Gallery. The student union is still named after him (Sivell's Bar). After retiring in 1954, Sivell returned to his home (The Hollow at the Stell) in Kirkcudbright.

Selected Solo Exhibitions
Royal Academy; Royal Scottish Academy; Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts; Aberdeen Artists' Society And the Royal Scottish Academy (where he exhibited a portrait of Miss Molly Sayers 1918)

Bibliography
Tales of the Kirkcudbright Artists, Haig Gordon, Kirkcudbright, 2006 Report on memorial exhibition at Harbour Cottage Gallery in Galloway News, 9 September 1960. Sivell's 'The Provost of Kirkcudbright' is illustrated in Outlook, Volume 1, No 3, June 1936, p39.