Christopher Hewetson

Biography

Hewetson was born in Thomastown, County Kilkenny, Ireland, in 1737/8 the son of Lieutenant Christopher Hewetson whose ancestry was from Yorkshire. His father died in 1744 when Christopher was only 7, leaving his mother Eleanor with four young children to raise.

He studied at Kilkenny College, where his uncle the Rev. Dr Thomas Hewetson was headmaster, and in Dublin under John van Nost the younger.

In 1765 he arrived in Rome with the American painter Henry Benbridge. He remained in Rome for the remainder of his life with the exception of two brief visits to Naples in 1766 and 1797.

With the assistance of Thomas Jenkins, Hewetson received commissions from numerous British and Irishmen visiting Rome on the Grand Tour. He also sculpted busts of a number of local churchmen. Antonio Canova was at Rome during part of Hewetson's stay. The rivalry between the two sculptors emerged in two great commissions, the Tomb for Pope Clemens XIV and the Tomb for Pope Clemens XIII, both won by Canova. In the last phase of his career Hewetson held a two-sided production: he sculpted copies after the Antique - sometimes in marble, more often in plaster - as well as portrait-busts. His workshop was in Via San Sebastianello, very close to Piazza di Spagna. Hewetson never married. He died at Rome in 1798, where he was buried in the Protestant Cemetery. His inventory after death, recently found, revealed the presence of 12 busts, some left unfinished, and of a considerable number of copies after the antique.

Works