Robert Ball Hughes (January 19, 1804 — March 5, 1868), often known as Ball Hughes, was a British-American sculptor, born in England and active in the United States.
Ball Hughes was born in London, where he studied under Edward Hodges Baily.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. Robert Ball Hughes 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.
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). 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.