Bob Nixon's Study at Foots Cray, Kent

The present drawing is a particularly charming example of the work of the caricaturist Nixon. Nixon's exact connections with Ireland are not known but he is thought possibly to have come from either Belfast or Co. Carlow. What is certain is that he worked with his brother Richard, an Irish merchant in London and travelled regularly in both northern and southern Ireland. They lived a life of riotous conviviality as well as being respectable businessmen. Nixon was a great friend of Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) whose influence can be seen in both his later drawing style and in his capacity to capture expressions, a talent that led him to excel at caricature.

Foot's Cray Place, was the seat of the Walsingham family for six generations until circa 1676. The house that survived until 1949, when it was destroyed by fire, was built in 1754 in the style of a Palladian villa on the instructions of the new owner Bouchier Cleeve.