Details of Sculptor

Surname

Nixon

Alternative Surname

First Name

Samuel

Initial of Surname

N

Year of Birth/Baptism

1803

Flourished

Year of Death

1854

Biographical Details

Born in London on 30 June 1804, the seventh child of Thomas and Sarah Nixon, he was baptised at St Mary-at-Hill on 29 July. His elder brother was James Henry Nixon (1802-1857), a painter on glass, and he was the uncle of James Thomas Nixon. He does not appear to have studied at the Royal Academy and no details have been discovered about his training. In 1826 he exhibited at the RA (25), giving his address as ‘The Shepherd,’ 21 Little Eastcheap. He remained at this address for at least five years. During this period he exhibited a handful of literary and religious subjects (25-28), but must also have executed a number of portraits since in 1836 the German visitor, J G Passavant, listed Nixon amongst the British sculptors who were distinguished in portrait sculpture. The Art Journal later opined that Nixon’s portraits were ‘highly meritorious productions, if not of the most elevated character’ (AJ 1854, 280).
In 1838 he carved the statue of Dr Richard Valpy, headmaster of Reading School, to a design by the architect Edward Charles Hakewill (5). Its erection was enthusiastically reported in the Reading Mercury on 15 December 1838. The journal liked the choice of Roche Abbey stone as a material that perfectly harmonised with its context and felt the design displayed ‘sound judgement and refined taste’. Nixon’s work was apparently ‘highly approved by those who selected him’(GPC). Valpy is shown standing with his right hand raised in a supposedly oratorical gesture though the Architectural Magazine reported that this, in fact, stemmed from Valpy’s habit of tracing his dead wife’s initials in the air with his forefinger.
By 1838 Nixon had moved to 2 Whitehart Court, off Bishopsgate Street, where he kept premises for the remainder of his short career. In 1839 he was employed by the architect Philip Hardwick RA to design and execute statues representing the seasons for Goldsmiths’ Hall (12). Summer was interpreted as a boy with a sheep and a festoon, the flowers apparently ‘equal to anything of the kind we have seen in sculpture’ (AU 1842, 128), and Winter as a girl shielding herself against a fierce wind, her figure outlined by tightly stretched drapery. When Winter was exhibited at the RA, the Art Union’s critic viewed the commission as ‘the dawning of a new and brighter day for an art that has been permitted to languish in this country’ (AU 1840, 2, 93-4). The Art Journal later recorded that Nixon was responsible for exterior carving on the hall, though the archives of the Goldsmiths’ Company record detailed payments for this work to Thomas Piper II and his son.
In 1844 Nixon was selected to execute the colossal standing figure of William IV for the City of London (14). The statue’s erection was celebrated with a dinner at the nearby Adelaide Tavern, where Nixon ate with ‘a numerous assembly of the influential gentlemen of the wards of Bridge and Candlewick’. The statue, carved from twenty tons of Scottish granite, depicts the barrel-chested ‘Sailor King’ in a contrapposto pose, with a long cape falling in broad folds. The Builder’s reception was lukewarm: ‘We are sorry that we cannot coincide in the flattering opinions of the statue which have been expressed. It is, to us coarse and clumsy and not likely to advance the reputation of the sculptor’ (Builder 1845, 26). The Art Journal and The Times both wrote approvingly of the statue and the Gentleman’s Magazine called it ‘a striking and imposing object… a masterpiece of its kind’ and ‘one of the chief ornaments of the City of London.’ It was, they wrote, ‘admired by all who are capable of appreciating artistic genius’ (GM, 1854, 42, 406).
Despite the acclaim, the work did not prove profitable. The tender was for £2,200, which did not cover Nixon’s materials and expenses. It was recorded in the sculptor’s obituary that the granite was ‘a material difficult to work and the expenses attending the conscientious execution of the contract severely crippled the artist.’ Nixon never recovered from the financial losses suffered through this commission (GM 1854, 2, 406). The statue itself was moved to Greenwich when an underpass was built in 1935 and the junction could no longer support its weight.
Nixon carved a number of varied sepulchral monuments. He produced memorials with busts to the clerics William Rodber and George Avery Hatch (8, 4). Several others have classical details: the monument to George Wynch has slender urns in the Greek style (3), the tablet to the Gillespie family takes the form of a stele with a high relief of three children in classical shifts, two of them crowning the third with laurels (2) and the monument to Dean Andrews (11) had a large weeping willow carved in marble. The Art Journal considered the work ‘admirably executed’ but suggested that a statue of the deceased could have been had for the same price, and questioned whether Nixon had in this case and others, sacrificed some of his artistic legacy to the whims of his clients. Nixon apparently maintained the view that ‘a man had no right, artist though he might be, to enforce his own views to the subversion of those entertained by his patron’ (AJ 1854, 280). The sculptor also executed monuments for export to Canada, though no specimens have been identified with certainty.
His later works included ornaments for the House of Lords (20), which the Art Union felt to give ‘indubitable evidence of that which so many others lack, the mind and hand of AN ARTIST’ (AU 1844, 111). His standing statue of John Carpenter, founder of the City of London School for Poor Scholars in 1442, was exhibited at Westminster Hall in 1844 (13). It depicts the balding founder, his beard trimmed below his chin, holding a bound book and quill. The sculptor has attempted period detail with an ornamented buckle and a purse hanging from the belt. Nixon’s commissions for educational institutions continued with a relief in Darley Dale stone for the Ragged School in Lambeth, an institution founded by Henry Beaufoy to teach destitute children (21). He appears once again to have made his work more challenging by his choice of material: he added £91 16s to his bill of 11 November 1850 because ‘in consequence of the extreme hardness and obdurate nature of the stone’ he had been compelled ‘to employ extra labour for which I am indebted to Messrs Lee’ (Lambeth Archives, IV/71/22).
In the Shoreditch census of 1851, Nixon was listed at 1 Manley Place, Kennington Common. He died there after a severe illness on 2 August 1854, aged only fifty. In his will, proved on 19 October 1850, he left all his ‘household furniture and all real and personal estate’ to his wife, Maria (PROB 11/2199/135).
The Art Journal’s obituary concluded that ‘Mr Nixon was a liberal master to those he employed, and held pecuniary profit in small estimation in comparison with the credit which he might derive from the excellence of his productions’ (AJ 1854, 280). The Gentlemans’ Magazine listed Nixon’s finest productions, bemoaning the time he had spent on mere church monuments, and finding regret ‘that a mind which could conceive and a hand which could execute such beautiful personifications, should have been so little employed. The reason is no doubt partly to be sought in the retiring manners and unselfish character which usually accompany true genius. These characteristics Mr Nixon possessed in an eminent degree’ (GM 1854, 42, 405-6).
MGS
Literary References: Passavant 1836, 2, 284; AJ 1854, 280; GM 1854, 42, 405-6; Graves 1875, 403; DNB; Graves III, 1905-6, 374; Gunnis 1968, 273; Read 1982, 95; Blackwood 1989, 54; ODNB (Terry Cavanagh)
Archival References: Nixon/Brayley 1845; IGI; VAM information file (compiled by Judith Pyle); GPC
Additional MS Sources: Note describing model, letter describing statue 6.4.1841, and letter to Henry Howard 28.7.1841: Edinburgh City Library BRS/qwN 45; BRS/qwN 45/Box; BRS/qwN 45/Box