THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR (LOTS 180-229) Like so many, my magpie-urge to collect expressed itself at an early age, from natural history specimens including sea shells to postage stamps. It so happened that among the furnishings of my parents' home was a set of twelve three-dimensional or embossed pictures of birds, which had descended in the family, originally a wedding present in the mid 19th century to my paternal great grandmother. Their bold colours and exotic descriptions fascinated me, while at school I was inspired by my teacher the acclaimed wildlife artist R.B.Talbot Kelly (d.1971), who believed that the artist could add to the appreciation of nature in ways that the scientist could not. So when my father offered me the set of Samuel Dixons birds paintings I enthusiastically accepted and they became mine on my father's death in the late 1950s. Coincidentally a set of similar pictures came to my attention illustrated in an elderly guide to Kew Palace found in a bottom drawer, at which point it occurred to me that there might be more to these Dixons than simple decoration and novelty. Later enquiries revealed that the pictures from Kew were subsequently moved to Buckingham Palace. And so my interest in Samuel Dixon and his followers was sparked, and when I started to see examples among the offerings at Christie's and in country house sales I began collecting them in earnest. Often the vivid colours had been dimmed through the effects of oil and gas lighting and some judicious conservation was in order. Some examples even retained their original 18th Century frames. Over the years I experienced the delights of purchasing items at many and varied sales including the four-day sale at Godmersham Park, Kent in 1983. And I suffered at the hands of burglars, though fortunately the plundered birds were safely recovered before they fell under the auctioneer's hammer. I continued collecting, as recently as 2006 purchasing the extraordinary large oval picture by Isaac Spackman (offered here as lot 188), though the cornerstone remains the original 1750 set of Dixon's 'Foreign Birds' (lot 184). Now the collection is to be sold and I hope that these delightful pictures bring to a new generation of collectors as much pleasure as they have brought me over more than half a century. August 2010

A SET OF NINE IRISH GEORGE II EMBOSSED FLOWER PICTURES

ATTRIBUTED TO SAMUEL DIXON, CIRCA 1750

Details

A SET OF NINE IRISH GEORGE II EMBOSSED FLOWER PICTURES
ATTRIBUTED TO SAMUEL DIXON, CIRCA 1750
Each depicting ribbon-tied bouquets of spring and summer flowers including primulas, peonies, tulips, fritillaries and other flowers in black and gilt-japanned frames, some inscribed in pencil inside backboard 'J.W.Holmes Aske Richmond YKS 1924', slight variations in framing and size
9 x 7¼ in. (23 x 18.5 cm.) (9)

Provenance

J.W.Holmes, Aske, Richmond Yorkshire.

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Lot Essay

Samuel Dixon of Capel Street, Dublin, advertised his first set of 'flower pieces, in Basso Relievo' in Faulkner's Dublin Journal on 26 April 1748. The set of twelve were described as 'ornamental to Lady's Chambers, but useful to paint and draw after, or imitate in Shell or Needle Work'. The compositions, as here, were ribbon-tied bouquets of flowers, almost certainly influenced by the great Dutch and French painters such as G.D.Ehret, Louis Tessier and J.B.Monnoyer. Comparable examples are illustrated in Ada K. Longfield, 'Samuel Dixons's embossed pictures of Flowers and Birds', Quarterly Bulletin of the Irish Georgian Society, vol. XVIII, no.4, 1975, p.115, fig.5, and 'More about Samuel Dixon and his Imitators', Quarterly Bulletin of the Irish Georgian Society, vol. XXIII, nos.1 & 2, 1980, pp. 3 and 4, figs. 2 & 3.

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