Background
Orval Hixon was born on February 4, 1884 in Richmond, Missouri, United States.
Orval Hixon was born on February 4, 1884 in Richmond, Missouri, United States.
His first job (1902) was as a printer's devil for The Missourian, the local newspaper. About a year later Orval Hixon moved to Kansas City and went into partnership in an advertising and printing business, during which time he was commissioned by the Union Pacific to record all their railroad lines in the state of Kansas.
When the business dissolved, around 1906, Orval Hixon apprenticed himself to Lyman Studebaker, proprietor of a successful portrait studio, for whom he worked until 1914, when he opened his own Main Street Studio. He briefly took on a business manager/partner, James Hargis Connelly, in 1915, and moved his studio to the Baltimore Hotel in 1920.
Orval Hixon also maintained branch studios in Liberty, Missouri, and Manhattan, Kansas, then moved his entire operation to Lawrence, Kansas, in 1930.
Quotes from others about the person
James Enyeart (Main Street Studio) described his work as: "widely known and admired within the theater world and not dependent upon radical innovations. Rather, it is the result of the sensitive and intelligent application of conventional techniques."
John Tibbetts (American Classic Screen) wrote that the color-blind Hixon's glass plates: "demonstrate the elusive union of the artist's brush and the mechanical fidelity of the plate. All of which accounts for the unique mixture of dream and reality in Hixon's best work."
