Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dixon, John (d.1715)
DIXON, JOHN (d. 1715), miniature and crayon painter, a pupil of Sir Peter Lely, was appointed by William III ‘keeper of the king's picture closet,’ and in 1698 was concerned in a bubble lottery. The whole sum was to be 40,000l., divided into 1,214 prizes, the highest prize in money 3,000l., the lowest 20l. This affair turned out a great failure, and Dixon, falling in debt, removed for security from St. Martin's Lane, where he lived, to King's Bench Walk in the Temple, and afterwards to a small estate at Thwaite, near Bungay in Suffolk, where he died in 1715. The two following pictures by Dixon were sold at the Strawberry Hill sale: a miniature of the Lady Anne Clifford, daughter and heiress to George, earl of Cumberland, first married to Richard, earl of Dorset, and afterwards to Philip, earl of Pembroke and Montgomery; and a portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria, with a landscape background.
[Walpole's Anecd. of Painting in England (1862), ii. 535.]