Robert Ball Hughes

Background

Ball Hughes was born in London in 1806.

Education

At sixteen or seventeen, he was placed in the studio of the sculptor Edward Hodges Baily, R. A. Here he remained several years, meanwhile studying in the Royal Academy school, where in 1823 he won a gold medal for an original bas-relief, "Pandora brought by Mercury to Epimetheus. " Many other school prizes and honors were his.

Career

It is said that he early showed talent by making from candle-ends a wax basrelief from a picture, "The Judgment of Solomon. " In 1822, he exhibited a bust of his father; in 1824, the aforesaid "Pandora"; in 1825, an "Achilles"; and in 1828, "A Shepherd Boy. "

In 1828 or 1829, when he arrived in New York City, a young man in his early twenties, he had a considerable facility in his art, gained under Baily as well as in the school and through independent work. He at once found occupation. According to the New York Mirror on February 13, 1830, "The directors of Clinton-hall association, some time since, applied to Mr. [Ball] Hughes, the sculptor, for the model of a projected statue of our late Governor, intended for the front of Clinton-hall. This model has been completed, and the exquisite accuracy of its execution has so fully satisfied the directors that they have ordered one of marble, larger than life. " In 1831 Hughes finished his model for the large high-relief marble memorial to Bishop John H. Hobart, for Trinity Church, New York.

His marble statue of Alexander Hamilton, placed in the rotunda of the Merchants' Exchange, New York City, and destroyed by fire eight months later (Dec. 16, 1835), is believed by many to have been the first marble portrait statue carved in the United States; Hughes imported English carvers for the work, refusing to employ Frazee and Launitz. Moreover, his bronze memorial statue of Nathaniel Bowditch, the mathematician, was the first bronze statue to be cast in this country (1847). Unfortunately the original bronze, doubtless because of obvious defects, was removed in 1886 from its site in Mount Auburn Cemetery, and there replaced by a better cast from the foundry of Gruet Jeune in Paris. In the vestibule of the Boston Athen'um is a plaster cast of this monument. The mathematician, draped and seated, holds upright on his knee a book, his English translation of Laplace's Mécanique Céleste; other books, with a globe and a sextant, round out a capable composition.

The Athen'um's storeroom shelters the small model of Hughes's "Hamilton, " and, presumably, a copy of his oft-mentioned "Uncle Toby and Widow Wadman. " His "Little Nell" (1858), a seated figure, under life size, of sentimental interest and mediocre modeling, is still on view in plaster in one of the Athen'um halls. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has his bust of Chief Justice John Marshall; the Yale Art Gallery, his bust of John Trumbull, considered his best work of this kind. Other titles mentioned are a "Mary Magdalen, " a bust and a statuette of Washington Irving, and a small model for an equestrian statue of General Washington. After a few years in New York Hughes moved to Dorchester, Massachussets, which was his home for the rest of his life. He made interesting sketches in burnt wood, and for a season lectured on art.

Achievements

• He died, without having accomplished as much as was expected from a man of his facility. In a recent monograph on American Wax Portraits, Ethel Stanwood Bolton brings to light twenty-three titles of wax portraits by him, including those of Chief Justice Marshall, President William Henry Harrison, and Robert Charles Winthrop. The New York Historical Society has a white wax bust of a man, signed "Ball Hughes, sculpt. 1830. " This variety of activities may account for the meagerness of his output in monumental work.

References

• American Wax Portraits