It was also during this period that he exhibited at the Royal Academy (1817,1818 and 1824), giving an address at 42 Great Marlborough Street, a short walk from his friend John Varley (1778-1842) and mentor William Mulready (1786-1863). He was a close friend of John Linnell (1792-1882) and knew William Blake intimately enough to send him his “best respects” in letters. 

His landscape sketches seem to have left a lasting impression on Linnell, who was quick to acquire them after Dixon’s death (c1834). Most of these were unsigned and were therefore easily conflated with Linnell’s own work, when inherited by his family decades later. 

The details of Dixon’s early life are difficult to piece together. He is described as a “protégé of William Mulready”, despite being at least a year older. The two were more likely contemporaries, working together in the studio of the genre painter and adventurer Robert Kerr Porter. On the 2nd July 1801, aged sixteen, Dixon entered the Royal Academy Schools.

Despite there being successful periods, the career of Dixon seems to have passed in relative obscurity. Linnell describes the chaotic scene following his premature death: 

A single man in lodgings in Tichfield Street he was found dead in his bed one morning in a wretched condition. He would not allow his room to be cleaned like other people but like a miser waited upon himself - his portfolios were rich in beautiful studies from nature made for the pictures which came to nothing through double mindedness & infirmity of purpose - but the disorder in which these studies were kept defies description. Some of them were to be found in the table drawer & were only discovered when the author of them went to look for spoons for tea...

Dixon is perhaps a rare example of an artist falling victim to their own parsimony, his refusal to employ a housekeeper saw that he gave much of his time to the everyday tasks of running a home. It is likely for these reasons that he has chosen millboard (the cheapest support) and it also telling that he paints himself (the most affordable and reliable of models). Some artists are temperamentally unsuited to success; Linnell’s unpublished memoirs paint the picture of an eccentric soul; talented, but too chaotic, too harassed for his artistic ideas to mature into anything more substantial than small studies. 

One of his [William Mulready’s] protégés was a common friend of his and Linnell’s, and one of the most singular geniuses of their wide circle of artist acquaintances. This was William, or ‘Billy,’ Dixon, as he was generally called, a man of uncommon ability, and of great knowledge in matters of art, yet so singularly deficient as regards strength of purpose that he never finished anything. He had no sooner brought a picture to the point of completion than he either began to take it to pieces, or else set it aside altogether. To a heart of the kindest he joined an awkwardness, a bashfulness, and an untidiness that possibly accounted for his utter failure.

Chapter III - The Life of John Linnell