Born in Raetihi on 21 September 1936, McLeavey was the son of Leslie Francis McLeavey and Elizabeth Theresa McLeavey. His father worked on the railways and his childhood was spent moving around railway settlements in New Zealand's North Island, including Ohakune, Levin, Napier, Feilding, New Plymouth, Waitara, and Lower Hutt. He credited the beginning of his interest in art to a teacher at his high school in Waitara.
Career
Jeremy Diggle, Professor of Fine Arts at Massey University, called McLeavey "the most important commercial gallerist New Zealand has ever had, effectively the pre-eminent publisher of modern New Zealand art in the past 50 years". His eponymous gallery is the longest-lived in New Zealand. McLeavey started his art dealing career in 1966, showing art in the bedroom of his apartment on central Wellington street The Terrace. His first sale was a Toss Woollaston landscape. In a 2009 documentary about his life, The Man in the Hat, McLeavey stated that he set up the gallery to "feed the culture, and to expose the culture to people who didn't know about it". In 1968 he opened a gallery in two rooms on the first floor of 147 Cuba Street in Wellington. Alongside other early emerging dealer galleries, such as Barry Lett Galleries in Auckland, Peter McLeavey Gallery played an important role in encouraging collectors to support contemporary New Zealand artists. Among his major sales were Colin McCahon's Northland Panels to the then National Art Gallery in 1978. This is now seen as one of McCahon's most important works. The gallery continues to operate at that location, and more than 500 exhibitions have been mounted there. McLeavey's daughter, Olivia McLeavey, took over the running of the gallery in 2011, when his health declined. The Peter McLeavey Gallery currently represents some of New Zealand's best-known modern and contemporary artists, including Laurence Aberhart, Bill Hammond, Richard Killeen, Colin McCahon, Yvonne Todd, Robin White, Toss Woollaston, and Jeffrey Harris. McLeavey died in Wellington on 12 November 2015 at the age of 79. In September 2018 his archive was acquired by the Alexander Turnbull Library. It will be available by request in late 2019 or 2020.
''The Man in the Hat''
In 2009, a documentary about McLeavey was released, directed by Luit Bieringa, produced by Jan Bieringa, and filmed by cinematographer Leon Narbey. The documentary intersperses scenes of McLeavey going about life at home, in inner-city Wellington, and in his gallery with readings by New Zealand actor Sam Neill from McLeavey's correspondence with artists.
In 2013 a biography of McLeavey by Jill Trevelyan was published by Te Papa Press. The biography, Peter McLeavey: The life and times of a New Zealand art dealer was named the 2014 New Zealand Post Book Awards Book of the Year.
