John Henry Foley

Sculptor, born in Dublin, Ireland. He went to London in 1834, and executed many statues of public figures, including that of Prince Albert for the Albert Memorial. Other major commissions were statues of Edmund Burke and Goldsmith at Trinity College, Dublin, and Henry Grattan on College Green, Dublin. He also designed for the O'Connell Monument in Dublin.

John Henry Foley (born May 24, 1818 in Dublin;

At thirteen he began to study drawing and modelling at the schools of the Royal Dublin Society, where he took several first-class prizes. He first appeared as an exhibitor in 1839 with his Death of Abel and Innocence and Bacchus, exhibited in 1840, gave him immediate reputation, and the work itself was afterwards commissioned to be done in marble for the earl of Ellesmere. In 1844 Foley sent to the exhibition at Westminster Hall his Youth at a Stream, and was, with Calder Marshall and John Bell, chosen by the commissioners to do work in sculpture for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament. Statues of John Hampden and Selden were executed for this purpose, and received liberal praise for the propriety, dignity and proportion of their treatment. Fanciful works, busts, bas-reliefs, tablets and monumental statues were in great numbers undertaken and executed by him with a steady equality of worthy treatment.

Among his numerous works the following may be noticed, besides those mentioned above: The Mother; The Elder Brother in Comus, his diploma work; the symbolical group Asia, as well as the statue of the prince himself, for the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park; The statue of Sir James Outram is probably his masterpiece. Foleys early fanciful works have some charming qualities; He died at Hampstead, London on 27 August 1874, and on 4 September he was buried in St. Paul's cathedral. He left his models to the Royal Dublin Society, his early school, and a great part of his property to the Artists Benevolent Fund. Cosmo Monkhouse, The Works of J.