Description

Extended Data

Birth Place

Broughton, Lancashire, England

Biography

photographic colourist and Anglican clergyman, was born in Broughton, Lancashire, son of Rev. Myles Cowpland Dixon. Admitted to St John’s College, Cambridge, in December 1845, he was sent to Nova Scotia as a missionary by the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1848 and remained there until at least 1853, serving at Truro and at Shubenacadie, Middle Musquodoboit. In May 1855 he came to Launceston with his wife and five children and the following year was appointed chaplain at Jerusalem (now Colebrook). In June 1861 he was transferred to Windermere on the Tamar River. Dixon’s first wife, Eliza Lovekin, died in June 1876 and in April 1877 he married Eliza Cox at Holy Trinity Church, Launceston. Complaints of pastoral neglect by West Tamar residents in 1877 led to an investigation by a committee of Synod which found that 'no misconduct in greater or less degree … has been substantiated, although we conceive that there are inaccuracies of statement in the letters … by the Rev. John Dixon to your Lordship, but not wilful in character nor material in kind’. Dixon retired in June 1883 and was granted an annual pension of £200. The following October he asked for it to be paid to him in England and returned home. On 14 June 1885 he died at Notting Hill, London. There were no children of either marriage. Dixon’s only known work is an oil portrait of Bishop F.R. Nixon painted over an albumen silver paper solar enlargement produced by Frith Brothers . Dixon exhibited the resulting work in the Tasmanian court at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial and the 1879 Launceston Fine Arts exhibitions. J. Whitefoord, who lent it to the latter, acknowledged it in the catalogue as 'Painted from [sic] an enlarged photograph’. It was subsequently purchased by a group of Launceston citizens for display in a public building (now QVMAG). The 'J. Dixon’ who exhibited photographic portraits in the 1862-63 Hobart Town Art Treasures Exhibition was most probably Rev. J.C. Dixon too, although again it is unlikely that he took the photographs himself. Instead, he seems to have specialised in painting over them; Dixon taught Sarah Ann Fogg how to colour photographic enlargements with oil paint. Writers: Glover, Margaret Date written: 1992 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. c.1819

Summary

John Cowpland Dixon was a photographic colourist and Anglican clergyman. He exhibited at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial and the 1879 Launceston Fine Arts exhibitions.

Gender

Male

Died

1885

Age at death

66