Sculptor born in London on 30 June 1804, one of the sons of Thomas Nixon, a cabinet maker. Nothing is known of his training, but his range included ideal subjects, portraiture, funerary monuments and architectural decoration. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1826–46, and the British Institution, 1831 and 1832. When Henry Doulton decided to expand his Lambeth pottery’s output to include sculptural reliefs and figures in the late 1830s it was to his friend Samuel Nixon that he turned for advice. One of Nixon’s earliest designs for Doulton was a figure in terracotta of Sir John Crosby, for the frontage of Crosby Hall, Bishopsgate (1837; presumed lost; engr. illus. in Atterbury and Irvine, 1979). Nixon’s friendship with Henry Doulton was undoubtedly also instrumental in his securing the commission for the sculptural decoration of Henry Beaufoy’s Lambeth Ragged School (1849–50), on whose committee, John Doulton, Henry’s father, served as secretary. Nixon designed and carved in Darley Dale stone, a relief panel, Education, for an exterior wall of the building and the Beaufoy Arms (lost) for its tympanum (building later demolished; relief installed on frontage of replacement building, 39 Black Prince Road). For the architect Philip Hardwick, Nixon carved four figures in marble representing The Seasons for the Grand Staircase of the Goldsmiths’ Hall, City of London, 1839–43; although the Art Journal later (1 September 1854, p. 280) stated that the arms, emblems and trophies on the building’s façade were also by Nixon, M.G. Sullivan (in Roscoe, 2009, p. 885) notes that the archives of Goldsmiths’ Company has records of payments to Thomas Piper II and his son for this work. Nixon’s funerary monuments include those to Philip Lucas (d. 1830), St John’s, Hackney; John Marshall (d. 1840), St Leonard’s, Shoreditch; and Samuel Whiteway (d. 1847), St Michael, Kingsteignton, Devon. He also carved in Roche Abbey stone, a figure of Dr Richard Valpy, to a design by the architect E.C. Hakewill, for St Laurence, Reading, Berkshire (1838). His commissions for public statues include John Carpenter, Roche Abbey stone, for the City of London School (1843–44) and King William IV, Foggin Tor Devon granite, for King William Street, London (erected 18 and 19 December 1844; re-erected at King William’s Walk, Greenwich, 1936). Nixon had a workshop and perhaps a residence for many years at 2 Whitehart Court, Bishopsgate Street, but by 1850 was living at 1 Manley Place, Kennington Common, south London, where he died, after a severe illness, on 2 August 1854, aged 50. He was survived by his wife, Maria, who was the sole beneficiary of his will, suggesting that he had no children. The writer of Nixon’s obituary in the Art-Journal considered his portraiture ‘highly meritorious productions, if not of the most elevated character’, and his monumental sculpture ‘far above the average quality of such works’. He lamented, however, the sculptor’s practice of always deferring to his patrons’ tastes, which, he thought, sometimes led him to execute works unworthy of his abilities. Nixon, in turn, defended this practice, declaring ‘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’.
Ancestry website: (i) Church of England Baptisms … City of London. Saint Mary at Hill. 1558–1812; (ii) Church of England Marriages and Banns … St George Hanover Square. 1846–1847; (iii) Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills … PROB 11. Will Registers. 1853–1854. Piece 2199: Vol 16, Quire Numbers 751–800 (1854).
Bibliography: Art Journal, 1 September 1854, p. 280 (obituary); P. Atterbury and L. Irvine, The Doulton Story, London, 1979, p. 68; J. Blackwood, London’s Immortals, London, 1989, pp. 54–55; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, pp. 37–39; L.H. Cust (rev. T. Cavanagh), ‘Nixon, Samuel’, ODNB, 2004; Gentleman’s Magazine, October 1854, pp. 405–06 (obituary); Illustrated London News, 13 January 1844, p. 21 (‘Goldsmiths’ Hall – Nixon’s Statues of the Seasons’); I. Roscoe et al, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660–1851, New Haven and London, 2009, pp. 884–86; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London, Liverpool, 2003, pp. xix, xiii, 82–83, 243.
Terry Cavanagh, June 2025
