The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Hughes, Ball

HUGHES, Ball, American sculptor: b. London, 19 Jan. 1806; d. Boston, Mass., 5 March 1868. He early exhibited a decided taste for modeling 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 was then placed in the studio of Edward Hodges Bailey, where he remained seven years. At this time he successfully competed for the prize awarded by the Royal Academy, winning the large silver medal for the best copy in bas-relief of the Apollo Belvedere; also the silver medal from the Society of Arts and Sciences for a copy of the Barberini faun, the large silver medal for the best original model from life and a gold medal for an original composition, “Pandora brought by Mercury to Epimetheus.” He emigrated in 1829 to New York, where his first work of importance was a marble statue of Hamilton, for the Merchants' Exchange, which was destroyed by fire in 1835. He also made a life-size statue of Bishop Hobart for the vestry of Trinity Church. Soon afterward he moved to Dorchester, Mass. Among later works of his are the bronze statue of Bowditch at Mount Auburn Cemetery, a bust of Washington Irving and a statuette of General Warren at Bunker Hill. A plaster figure, ‘Little Nell,’ and a group, ‘Uncle Toby and Widow Wadman,’ are in the Boston Athenæum.