Joshua Dixon

Joshua Dixon was a merchant and art collector who bequeathed his collection of pictures to the Bethnal Green Museum in 1886 for the benefit of East Londoners.

Joshua Dixon was born on 18 November 1810, the eldest son of Abraham Dixon, a merchant and inventor in the woollen textile industry, of Whitehaven, Cumberland, and Letitia, daughter of John Taylor, of Gomersal, Yorkshire. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School and made his fortune as a cotton merchant in New Orleans and Liverpool. From 1869-70 he served as deputy chairman of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway Company. His collection of pictures and objects d’art filled Winslade Park, near Exeter, the house that he had purchased on his retirement. Dixon served as a justice of the peace for Devon and, in 1882, joined the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art. He died on 7 December 1885. Dixon bequeathed his collection of 295 oil paintings, watercolour drawings, bronzes and statuary to the Bethnal Green branch of the South Kensington Museum in 1886 for ‘the use of the public of East London’.

Information in the V&A Archive

MA/1/D1240/1-2: Nominal file – Joshua Dixon (bequest)

MA/30/137&138: Central Inventory registers, museum object numbers 996-1886 to 1284-1886

MA/49/2/63: Press cuttings

ED 84/39: Precis of the Board Minutes of the Department of Science and Art, 1 January 1884 to 31 December 1887

Selected printed sources:

List of the bequests and donations to the South Kensington Museum, now called The Victoria and Albert Museum: completed, to 31st December 1900. London: HMSO, 1901. NAL pressmark: VA.1901.0001

Catalogue of a collection of oil paintings, water-colour drawings and engravings, enamel paintings, sculpture, bronzes, &c.: bequeathed by the late Joshua Dixon, Esq. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode for HMSO, 1887; 2nd edn. NAL Pressmark: VA.1887 Box.0001

Water-colours in the Dixon bequest: twenty-four reproductions with biographical notes on the artists. [London: HMSO, 1923]. NAL Pressmark: 41.CC Box II

Parkinson, Ronald. Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860. London: HMSO, 1990. NAL pressmark: 708.21 VIC

[Obituary]. Report and transactions of the Devonshire Association for the advancement of science, literature, and art. vol. 47. Plymouth: W. Brendon & Son, 1886

Sparrow, W. Shaw. ‘The Dixon bequest at Bethnal Green.’ The Magazine of Art 15 (1892). NAL Pressmark: PP.400.S

To locate material in the National Art Library, please search the Library Catalogue.