This fall, visitors to the Dixon’s exhibition An Investment in Pleasure: Fifty Years of the Dixon Gallery and Gardens Collection will be able to see the cornerstone of the museum’s history: Margaret and Hugo Dixon’s founding bequest of twenty-nine works of art. The acquisition of some of the most well-known Impressionist works in the Dixon collection including Dancer Adjusting Her Slipper by Edgar Degas; Le Palais, Belle Île by Henri Matisse; and The Island of La Grand Jatte in Summer by Stanislas Victor-Édouard Lépine, can be traced to the influence of one man: John Rewald (1912 – 1994). Rewald, an art historian and expert on the artist Paul Cézanne, continues to be well-known for his authoritative textbook The History of Impressionism (first ed. 1961).
Rewald met the Dixons by 1953 and soon became their friend and art advisor. He gave Hugo Dixon the initial push to move his art collection away from British art toward Impressionism, encouraging him to purchase a group of important French artworks that would shape the trajectory of the Dixon Gallery and Gardens collection for decades to come. Rewald’s role was vital––though quiet––recorded on personalized stationery written decades ago. Seven letters from John Rewald to Mr. Dixon are stored in the Dixon’s archives. Together they give readers a sense of the scope of the numerous connections Rewald had made in the art circles of Paris, London, and New York after having fled Nazi Germany in 1941. With years of exposure to the art world, Rewald developed a keen eye for discerning exceptional paintings.
In a letter written in January 1958, Rewald urged Dixon to purchase the Eugène-Louis Boudin painting Venice, Santa Maria della Salute and the Custom House (1895). Rewald’s feelings towards beautiful art ran deeply, and about this piece he wrote, “the composition is so lovely, the execution is so vivid, and the colors are so exquisite, that I would be very much in favor of this acquisition.”
Rewald signed this letter “Sincerely, John,” but by 1964 he would sign another message related to the acquisition of Paul Signac’s Saint-Briac, The Mariners’ Cross, High Tide (1885), “With best regards to you and Maggy, as ever, John.” When read together, these letters suggest the evolution of the close relationship Rewald shared with the Dixons, and his respected status as an art historian, advisor, and friend.
A selection of Rewald’s letters to Hugo Dixon will be on display during An Investment in Pleasure: Fifty Years of the Dixon Gallery and Gardens Collection.
Della Rhodes, 2026 Curatorial Intern