British-American sculptor
Robert Ball Hughes
(19 January 1804 ? 5 March 1868), often known as
Ball Hughes
, was a British-American sculptor, born in England and active in the United States.
Biography
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Ball Hughes was born in London. His birth year has been confirmed to be 1804 according to his baptismal record on the International Genealogical Index, and not 1806 as has been widely reported. His
given name
was Robert Balls Hughes according to his baptismal record.
He early exhibited a decided taste for modelling, and at 12 years of age made out of wax candle ends a bas-relief copy of a picture representing the wisdom of Solomon, which was afterward cast in silver. He later studied under
Edward Hodges Baily
for seven years. During this time, the
Royal Academy
awarded him a large silver medal for the best copy in bas-relief of the
Apollo Belvedere
. He also received a silver medal from the Society of Arts and Sciences for a copy of the
Barberini Faun
, a large silver medal for the best original model from life, and a gold medal for an original composition, "Pandora brought by Mercury to Epimetheus." In 1830 he was elected into the
National Academy of Design
as an Honorary Academician.
Hughes was commissioned to sculpt busts of various members of Britains nobility and Royal family, including the
Duke of Sussex
, the
Duke of Cumberland
and most notably King
George IV
. Robert Ball Hughes emigrated to New York City in 1829. His first major commission in America, was a high-relief marble memorial to Bishop
John H. Hobart
for
Trinity Church, New York
, followed by a statue of New York Governor
DeWitt Clinton
, and subsequently a statue of
Alexander Hamilton
(placed atop of the Merchants' Exchange Building New York, but destroyed by fire in 1835). The original plaster study for that work is held by the Museum of the City of New York.
After a short stay in New York, and then Philadelphia, he settled in
Boston
, where he produced busts of
Washington Irving
(1836) and
Edward Livingston
, and a large bronze of mathematician
Nathaniel Bowditch
for
Mount Auburn Cemetery
(1847). Ball Hughes' statue of Nathaniel Bowditch was the first large bronze to be cast in America. He made
Little Nell
and the group
Uncle Toby and Widow Wadman
, whose plaster models went to the
Boston Athenaeum
, but were never carved in marble. Among his later works were a model of an equestrian statue of
Washington
, intended for the city of Philadelphia, a
Crucifixion
, and a
Mary Magdalen
.
Ball Hughes also designed numerous wax medallions, as well as coins for the United States mint, including modifications of
Christian Gobrecht
's design for the
Seated Liberty quarter
(1838), and the
half dime
(1859). In his final years, he began to produce burnt wood pictures (pyroengravings or "poker pictures"), including
The Witches of MacBeth
(c. 1840),
Babylonian Lions
(1856),
Don Quixote in His Study
(1863),
The Trumpeter
(1864),
General Grant Proclaiming the Surrender of Richmond
(1865),
The Last Lucifer Match
(1865), and
The Monk
(1866). He also lectured on art. Hughes is buried in the Cedar Grove Cemetery,
Dorchester, Massachusetts
.
The
National Portrait Gallery
contains Ball Hughes' busts of
Nathaniel Bowditch
,
Washington Irving
,
James Kent
,
John Marshall
, and his medallion of
John Trumbull
.
References
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]
- Robert Ball Hughes biography
- Robert Ball Hughes
at the Dorchester Atheneum
- "The Statue of Gen. Hamilton",
The Family Magazine, Or Monthly Abstract of General Knowledge
, Vol 3, edited by Origen, New York: Redfield & Lindsay, pp. 41 & 42, 1835-6.
- Gerry, Samuel L. "The Old Masters of Boston",
The New England Magazine
, vol. 9, issue 6, Feb. 1891.
- Orcutt, William Dana.
Good Old Dorchester: A Narrative History of the Town, 1630-1893
, Cambridge: The University Press, 1908.
- Edward Daland Lovejoy, "The Poker Drawings of Ball-Hughes",
Antiques Magazine
, September 1946.
- Examples of Hughes' pyrographic art
- Pyrograffiti
- National Portrait Gallery collection of Ball Hughes' work
- Wilson, J. G.
;
Fiske, J.
, eds. (1892).
"Hughes, Ball"
.
Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography
. New York: D. Appleton.
Further reading
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