Henry Inman

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TitleHenry Inman

Artist Robert Ball Hughes (1806 - 1868)

Date1837

MediumPlaster

DimensionsOverall: 26 1/2 × 14 1/2 × 11 1/4 in.

Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, Gift of George Buckham, 1887

Object number59-S

Label TextHughes modeled this bust in New York when he was at the peak of his career and producing his finest portrait work. In the previous decade Henry Inman had established himself as New York's leading painter of portraits, a position enhanced early in 1829 when he won the commission to produce a likeness of Governor Martin Van Buren for City Hall. Hughes surely knew of Inman from his first days in New York, having arrived there the year of the Van Buren commission, a much-publicized event. It is not known whether the two artists were friends, but the intelligence and beneficence evident in Hughes's bust of Inman would suggest that they at least respected one another professionally.
The provenance of this bust is not certain, but it would appear to have been purchased directly from the sculptor by George Buckham, who may have commissioned it. Buckham was a close friend of Inman. He was a pallbearer at Inman's funeral, served as an executor of his estate, and was instrumental in organizing the Inman memorial exhibition held at the American Art-Union in New York in 1846. Buckham surely owned Hughes's bust of Inman by the time of the exhibition, as he lent it and two of Inman's portraits from his collection to that event. These were a portrait of Buckham and a double portrait of his wife and daughter (Worcester [Massachusetts] Art Museum and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, respectively) that Inman had executed in 1839. Mrs. Inman lent to the exhibition a "Colossal crayon Portrait of the Artist, . . . (Copied for a friend, by Mr. Inman, From a bust of himself, by Ball Hughes)."
Buckham evidently remained close to the Inman family. His relationship with John O'Brien Inman, the painter's son, is apparent in the two volumes Buckham wrote about his travels in which he recounted visits with John in Italy during 1869-70. No replicas or variants of this bust are known to have been made.

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