Amasa Hewins

Who was Amasa Hewins?

Amasa Hewins was an American portrait, genre and landscape painter. He also exported fine paintings, antiques, and objet d'art from Italy to Boston during the 1850s, selling most of it through private dealers and at auctions in New York City and Boston.

Hewins was born in Sharon, Massachusetts, to Esther and Amasa Hewins. He married Elizabeth Newell Alden on August 22, 1820 and thereafter he lived in Dedham. In 1821, Hewins was listed in the Boston business directory as a merchant in West India goods on Brattle Street in Boston, trading in rum, sugar, molasses and cotton. A year later, Elizabeth gave birth to their first child, Charles, prompting Amasa to take his younger brother Royall into business as a partner; the couple eventually had nine children.

An advertisement for A. Hewins, portrait painter appeared in the New York newspaper “The National Advocate” on December 6, 1824. In 1825, Hewins relocated his family to Washington City, where he offered an Academy for the instruction of young Ladies and gentlemen and also held a post as Professor of Drawing at Mr. and Mrs. Bonfils Young Ladies’ Seminary, the school of his sister-in-law and her husband, until at least 1827. Returning to Boston around 1828, Hewins first exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum in 1830, and occasionally thereafter until 1846; he also exhibited at the National Academy of Design. From August 1830 to June 1833, he travelled abroad in Italy, France and England, along with American artists Horatio and John Greenough, Samuel F.B. Morse, and Thomas Cole.