From his first marriage, he was the brother-in-law of businessman and sailer Alfred Waldemar Garmann Larsen.
He also trained in Copenhagen under Peder Severin Krøyer and Laurits Tuxen (1898).
Dating from the beginning of the 1930s, Kavli collected most of his motifs from southern Norway.
He is represented at the National Gallery in Oslo with fifteen works, including Jær-kone[4] and Landskap fra Jæren[5] from 1899 and Ung dame[6] from 1910.
Arne Kavli was the recipient of the silver medal at the International Graphic Exhibition at Leipzig in 1914, was awarded at Gothenburg Exhibition in 1923 and was the recipient of the King's Medal of Merit in 1968.