Francis Nixon (bishop)
Francis Russell Nixon was a British Anglican bishop who served as the first Bishop of Tasmania, Australia. See L. Robson, 'A History of Tasmania', Vol. I, OUP, Melbourne, 1983.
Nixon was the son of Robert Nixon, a priest and amateur painter of North Cray, Kent. Nixon attended the Merchant Taylors school before studying at St John's College, Oxford, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and subsequently Oxford Master of Arts and Doctor of Divinity. He was ordained priest in 1827.
On 24 August 1842, Nixon was consecrated a bishop at Westminster Abbey, to serve as the first Bishop of Tasmania, and arrived in the colony in June 1843.
Like his father, Nixon was a painter. Early photographer Louisa Anne Meredith is remembered by John Watt Beattie in the 1880s showing him the "many specimens of both her own and the Bishop Nixon's photographic work in those early days of the very black art," and that she had been "instrumental in having the last remnant of the Tasmanian Aboriginals photographed for the purposes of science;" in March 1858, Nixon had made portraits of nine individuals belonging to the Oyster Cove group, photographs which remained relatively obscure until Beattie reproduced copies of them for the tourist industry, using his own name.
Nixon died on 7 April 1879.