140 ART AND THE EMPIRE CITY

were any of the honors a gifted sculptor in New York would have expected. He remained an outsider, never elected to membership in the National Academy of Design or the American Academy of the Fine Arts. In September 1834- he succumbed to cholera, and his reputation soon faded into obscurity. The reception of Robert Ball Hughes was very dif­ ferent. This talented artist arrived in New York from England in r829 and earned instant cachet with the city's cultural elite, for he had studied at the Royal Academy of Arts and worked in the studio of N eo­ classical sculptor Edward Hodges Baily, a follower of John Flaxman, the leading Neoclassical sculptor and draftsman of his time in England. The credentials and technical proficiency of this ambitious foreigner im­ mediately raised the standards for sculptors in New York. Hughes served as a lecturer in sculpture at the National Academy of Design in 1829 and 1830, and in 1831 he was named an honorary member of both the National Academy and the American Academy, evidence that each institution was eager to lay claim to him. He was soon awarded three coveted monu­ mental commissions, ones that Frazee no doubt had hoped to earn. In late r829 Hughes produced a model Fig. ro6. John Henri Isaac Browere, john Adams, Quincy, Massachusetts, 1825. Plaster. New York State Historical for the first, a marble statue of Alexander Hamilton Association, Cooperstown for the Merchants' Exchange, the heart of commercial New York, to be funded through the subscriptions of city businessmen. When the preliminary model was 18. [A. T. Goodrich], The Picture Washington installed in City Hall Park). In addition, accepted in December 1830, committee member of New-York, and Stranger's Guide to the Commercial Browere displayed his busts for an admission fee in Hone offered it high praise: "I have no doubt that if Metropolis of the United States order to "hand down to po.sterity, the features and the artist finishes the statue agreeably to the promise (New York: A. T. Goodrich, forms of distinguished American personages, as they given by the model, it will be the best piece of statu­ r828), p. 375. 20 19. John H. I. Browere to John actually were at the period of the execution of their ary in the United States?' He designed but never Trumbull, July 12, 1826, John likenesses." 18 These he showed in the Gallery of Busts executed the second, a full-length portrait of De Witt Henri Isaac Browere letters, microfilm reel 2787, frame 6oo, and Statues he operated in his studio, the location Clinton requested in early 1830 by the Clinton Hall Archives of American Art, of which frequently changed and which perhaps was Association for the area in front of Clinton Hall. Smithsonian Institution, inspired by the popular example of John Scudder's Finally, in r83r Hughes completed his plaster alto­ Washington, D.C. 20. The Diary of Philip Hone, American Museum on Broadway. relief model for the third, the Bishop John Henry 1828-rBsr, 2 vols., edited by Under the pseudonym Middle-Tint the Second, Hobart Memorial, a reclining portrait of the dying Allan Nevins (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, Browere also wrote art criticism, often vituperative in bishop attended by an allegorical figure of Religion 1927), vol. r, p. 33, entry for tone, that may have alienated both William Dunlap of in the tradition of Flaxman's funerary monuments. December 24, 1830. the National Academy and Trumbull of the American Translated into marble, it was dedicated in Trinity 21. "StatueofHamilton;' New-York 21 Evening Post, November 24, Academy. Testifying to this possibility is an acrimo­ Church in 1835. 1829, p. 2; ibid., December 12, nious letter of r826 to Trumbull in which Browere Hughes's accomplishments must have made a con­ 1829, p. 2; "Arts and Sciences: Statue of Clinton," New-York wrote: "the very illiberal and ungentlemanlike man­ siderable impression on Trumbull, for he ardently Mirror, February 13, 1830, p. 251; ner in which Col. Trumbull treated the execution ... supported the sculptor. Trumbull, who himself had and "Works of Art;' New-York of my portrait Busts [ofJ efferson, Adams, and Carroll studied in London, with Benjamin West, clearly felt a Evening Post, November 4, r83r,p. 2. when shown in New York] ... has evidenced a per­ kinship with the London-trained Hughes. As the most sonal ill-will and hostility to me?' 19 Browere hoped the important figure in the New York art world, Trumbull federal government would commission bronze casts welcomed the Englishman into the inner circle of of his plasters of eminent personages for exhibition in the American Academy, in 1830 allowing him use of Washington, but funding was not forthcoming; nor its sculpture gallery to produce his full-size working