John Henry Foley

John Henry Foley in 1863, by Ernest Edwards.

John Henry Foley (24 May 1818 – 27 August 1874), often referred to as JH Foley, was an Irish sculptor, best known for his statues of Daniel O'Connell in Dublin, and of Prince Albert in London. Both are still considered iconic in each city.

Life

Foley was born on the 24th of May 1818 at 6 Montgomery Street, Dublin, in what was then the city's artists' quarter. The street has been renamed Foley Street in his honour. His father was a glass-blower and his step-grandfather Benjamin Schrowder was a sculptor. At thirteen he began to study drawing and modelling at the Royal Dublin Society, where he took several first-class prizes. In 1835 he was admitted a student in the schools of the Royal Academy, London. He first appeared as an exhibitor there in 1839, but came to fame in 1844 with his Youth at a Stream. Thereafter commissions provided a steady career for the rest of his life. In 1849 he was made an associate, and in 1858 a full member of the Royal Academy.

In 1864 he was chosen to sculpt one of the four large groups, each representing a continent, on the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens. His design for Asia was approved in December of that year. In 1868, Foley was also asked to make the statue of the Prince Albert himself for the memorial, following the death of Carlo Marochetti, who had originally received the commission.

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. He did not see the entire Albert Memorial completed before his death. A statue of Foley himself, on the front of the Victoria and Albert Museum, depicts him as a rather gaunt figure, moustached with a floppy cap.

Gallery

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  Daniel O'Connell O'Connell Street, Dublin

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  Michael Faraday in London

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  Clive of India in Shrewsbury

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  Prince Albert in the Albert Memorial, Hyde Park

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  Stonewall Jackson in Richmond, Virginia.

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  Statue of Father Mathew in St. Patrick's Street, Cork

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  Statue of Benjamin Guinness in the grounds of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin

Works

See also Works at Wikimedia Commons

His more famous works in London include:

• The Mother; Egeria, for the Mansion House;
• The Elder Brother in Comus, his diploma work;
• The Muse of Painting, the monument of James Ward, R.A.;
• Caractacus, for the Mansion House;
• 'Hermaphroditus or Youth at the stream (1844) was cast in bronze by J Hadfield for The Great Exhibition of 1851.
• Helen Faucit;
• Michael Faraday ;
• Reynolds ;
• Charles Barry, in Westminster Palace Yard;
• John Stuart Mill, for the Thames embankment
• The symbolical group Asia, as well as the statue of the prince himself, for the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park

In Ireland:

• Goldsmith and Burke outside Trinity College, Dublin;
• Daniel O'Connell" (O'Connell Street),
• Sir BL Guinness (1875)
• Field Marshal Gough (formerly in the Phoenix Park, now at Chillingham Castle);
• Henry Grattan, College Green
• Sir Dominic Corrigan
• Memorial to Brigadier General John Nicholson (1862) in Lisburn Cathedral.
• Memorial to Father Mathew, campaigner for teetotalism, in Cork (1864)

Elsewhere:

• Clyde, for Glasgow;
• Clive, for Shrewsbury;
• Hermaphroditus or Youth at the stream (1844) was cast in bronze by J Hadfield for The Great Exhibition of 1851. According to a plaque which accompanies it, the statue was donated to the Bancroft Gardens in Stratford-upon-Avon by Alfred Bullard in 1932.
• Viscount Hardinge (1858), Canning and Sir James Outram (1864'), for Calcutta;
• Hon. James Stewart, for Ceylon;
• Stonewall Jackson, in Richmond, Va.

The equestrian statue of Sir James Outram is probably his masterpiece. Foley's early fanciful works have some charming qualities; but he will probably always be best remembered for the workmanlike and manly style of his monumental portraits.

Destruction of some works

Following the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922, a number of Foley's works were removed, or destroyed without notice, because the persons portrayed were considered hostile to the process of Irish independence. These included Lord Carlisle, Lord Dunkellin (in Galway) and Field Marshal Gough in the Phoenix Park. The statue of Lord Dunkellin was decapitated and dumped in the river as one the first acts of the short-lived "Galway Soviet" of 1922.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.  The article is available here: [1]
• W. Cosmo Monkhouse, The Works of J. H. Foley (1875).

External links

• Details of recent book and documentary film on Foley.