NIXON, Stanhope Wood
Description:
Oil on canvas, 62” x 39.5”. Full-length, dressed in a Scottish costume of red tartan.
Location:
Private Collection, North Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A. (2003).
Provenance:
By family descent.
Bibliography:
Town and Country, August 22, 1903, ‘A Successful Portrait painter’, by S.E. Leisha, p.21 (reproduced).
The sitter was born in Philadelphia on 1 April 1894, studied at Yale University but did not graduate, was arrested for assault in 1914 after which his health collapsed and pleaded not guilty, and married Doris Ryer in 1917 and had two children, Lewis Nixon III and Blanche Nixon. He was vice-president at the time of the 1924 Nixon Nitration Works Disaster of which his father was president. He was divorced in 1945 and died on 12 January 1958.
Painted in 1902-03. In a letter in the artist’s papers, undated – but in 1903, the sitter’s father, Lewis Nixon, wrote from 10, West 43rd Street, New York, that ‘…I enclose a check for $1500. We are both much pleased with the portrait of Stanhope./ Mrs. Nixon joins me in kind regards…’ The sitter was the offspring of Lewis Nixon’s first marriage to Sally Lewis Wood.
