A Thief’s Passion Is Auctioned : Crime: As his photograph collection is sold, embezzler Robert Dixon is praised as an art lover.

To many, Robert J. Dixon was a thief motivated by greed, who plundered $1.8 million from Newport Beach while he was the city’s utility director.

But to the art experts gathered Monday at a swank Sunset Strip auction house to bid on Dixon’s extensive art collection, the 48-year-old admitted embezzler is something of a romantic figure lured into crime by a deep love for fine photographs.

“This was a passion for him. He was very sincere about his art. Unfortunately, he couldn’t afford it,” said Julie Nelson-Gal, director of the fine photographs department at the Butterfield & Butterfield auction house in Hollywood.

“Many people think he was a very nice man. But I know Newport Beach doesn’t look at it that way.”

City officials certainly don’t. The cash-strapped city ordered the auction of Dixon’s collection in hopes of recovering what they could from his belongings.

More than 100 photographs were on the block, ranging from the work of famed photographer Irving Penn worth $8,000 to pictures of nude men and women that went for less than $800.

The whole collection was valued at between $200,000 and $300,000. Total sales from the auction were not available, but Butterfield & Butterfield officials said some works sold for hundreds less than their estimated prices, while others went for more than the asking price.

Dixon’s collection wasn’t the only work being offered at the auction, which occurred in Hollywood and San Francisco simultaneously thanks to a telephone hook-up. But the collection was the largest on display and emerged as one of the stars of the show.

Arts buyers and auction officials were quick to point out the contradiction between the gentle and thoughtful eye of Dixon the collector and the criminal activities of Dixon the embezzler.

“I knew who he was before people told me about him,” Nelson-Gal said of Dixon, who is now serving a four-year jail sentence. From viewing his collection, “I thought he was a quiet, gentle and introspective man. Not someone arrogant or obnoxious. Somebody with a lot of passion.”

Some art enthusiasts shared that view, reacting with surprise that the collection had been amassed over 10 years with city money Dixon stole through an elaborate check-writing scam.

“So this guy took money?” asked Tom Moore, a Los Angeles graphic arts collector. “He had some nice work. Not a lot of icons, just normal people.”

The auction house’s first exposure to Dixon’s photographs came in August when Newport Beach police allowed Nelson-Gal to go through the holding bins that had housed the collection since Dixon’s arrest in January.

“I had no idea (beforehand) whether this was junk or great stuff,” she said. “I could tell immediately that this was fine photography.”

Dixon’s collection was diverse and varied.

Some were classic shots from 30 or more years ago which have been reproduced onto posters and are fairly recognizable. One such piece is Penn’s 1948 photograph of 11 members of a ballet theater.

Other works centered on the human body and included the photos of Herb Ritts, whose “Waterfall II, Hollywood” shows a nude man being drenched as he stands below a waterfall.

Still other parts of the collection focused on the contemporary work of relatively unknown artists, like Steve Lavoie’s 1990 photograph of a stone-like figure of a man appearing to wear a mask.

Dixon’s collection showed a taste for popular art over museum-quality work, dealers said. He seemed to choose photos based on their appeal and quality rather than on their chances of appreciating in value, Nelson-Gal added.

“He had a good eye. He collected the right things,” she said of Dixon’s pieces, many of which once graced the walls of his Huntington Beach condominium. “He wasn’t super-knowledgeable and he wasn’t tremendously sophisticated. But you could tell he was learning.”

DIXON REPLACEMENT

Newport Beach is close to hiring a new utilities director. B2