Bust of David Hewes
ClassificationsSculpture
Subject
David Hewes
(American, 1822 - 1912)
Date1877
Made AtPisa, Italy, Europe
MediumMarble
Dimensions13 × 10 1/4 in. (33 × 26 cm)
Credit LineGift of Mrs D. Eyman Huff
Object number2697
DescriptionJust four years before moving to Orange County for his wife Mathilda's health, David Hewes took his family to Europe to acquire artworks and décor for their San Francisco home. In Pisa, Italy they met with the Italian sculptor Guiseppe Andreoni and Hewes commissioned busts of himself and his step-daughter, Franklina Gray. At the end of the trip, David and company returned to San Francisco in 1877 only to be met with the almost immediate worsening of Mathilda’s health. The family moved south to Tustin for warmer weather, but Mathilda passed away in 1887.
Almost thirty years later, near the end of his life, Hewes brought the bust of himself to his newly created David Hewes Realty Corporation. He passed away shortly thereafter and the bust came into the possession of D. Eyman Huff, the new manager. When the Bowers Museum was founded, the bust was donated so that the sculpture of one of Orange County’s premier figures could be properly preserved.
Franklina, who married W.S. Bartlett following the family’s return from Europe also kept her bust with her. In 1965, long after Franklina’s death, her descendants discovered that the complementary bust of Hewes was in the Bowers Museum’s collections and donated their Franklina’s marble likeness so that it could be kept “near the David Hewes when possible.” The bust of Hewes is a stoic reminder of a quintessential, but largely forgotten figure in the history of early Orange County and the transcontinental railroad.
On View
On viewCollections
c. 1888
1776-1831
1903-1912