Life
1818-1874; b. Montgomery St, Dublin; son of Jesse Foley and Eliza Schrowder Byrne, the step-daughter of Benjamin Schrowder, a sculptor who worked on Gandon’s Custom House; taught carving by Schrowder and later trained under John Smith at the RDS Arts School from aetat. 13; received awards
for drawing and modelling; moved to London and studied at RA, where he joined his brother
Edward in 1834 and won large Silver Medal; tutored by Westmacott (RA Prof.); influenced by works of Canova and Flaxman; exhibited Death of Abel at Royal Academy from 1839;
made statues of Hampden and Seldon for Westminster Hall, 1847; estab. studio and home at Osnaburgh St., London, and joined by two sisters after death of his mother; executed statues
of Goldsmith [1861] and Burke for TCD [1868]; other works incl. equestrian figures of Sir
James Outram in Calcutta and Viscount Hugh Gough in Phoenix Park, Dublin [1880]; and figures of Prince Consort and of Egeria
for Albert Memorial, London; statue of Hampden for St Stephen’s Hall,
Westminster; statue of Grattan, now in College Green; also Prince Albert,
supported by artisans, National Museum, Dublin; many portrait busts and
church monuments incl. those of Lord Canning, Lord Clyde, John Stuart
Mill and Charles Barry, and Stonewall Jackson; also several statues for
Royal College of Physicians, Dublin, 1867; commissioned to make O’Connell
Monument in Dublin, finished figures on the plinth [c.1870]; other figures
completed by his assistant Brock; died following attack of pleuritic effusion, 6 Aug., at his new home, The Priory, Hampstead,
on 27 Aug.; bur. St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. BREF DIB DIH
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Works
W. C. Monkhouse, The Work of John Henry Foley (London 1975); J.
Turpin, ‘John Henry Foley 1818-1874’, in Irish Times ( 2 April 1974). See also Anne Crookshank, ‘Irish Sculpture’, in Apollo 84 (1966) and H[oman] Potterton, The O’Connell Monument (Ballycotton 1973).
Criticism
Sarah Atkinson, John Henry Foley (Dublin 1882).
William C[osmo] Monkhouse, The Works of John Henry Foley ... Sculptor with critical and illustrative notes by W.C.M. (London: Virtue, Spalding, & Co. 1875), vii, [1], 67, [1]p., 15 pls. [engravings], fol., and Do. [mocrofiche vers.] (Chadwyck-Healey Ltd. [1995]).
Ronan Sheehan, Foley’s Asia (1999) [infra].
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Notes
Brian de Breffny, Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopaedia (London:
Thames & Hudson): lived in London from date of removal there; won
Westminster Palace competitions, 1844, and many govt. commissions; known
for commemorative statues of ‘heroic dead’; examples in England,
Ireland, and India, showing ability to conjure up spirited conception
of each subject in a characteristic pose; Prince Albert and the Asia group on the Albert Memorial. Bibl., B. Read, ‘John Henry Foley’, The
Connoisseur, clxxxvi (1974), pp.262-71; J. Turpin, ‘The Career
and Achievements of J. H. Foley’, Dublin Historical Record,
xxxii, nos. 2 & 3 (1979), includes catalogue.
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; this ed. 1984), J. H. Foley, b. Dublin 1818, ed. Art School of RDS, and RA London, his tutor being Westmacott, RA Prof. of Sculpture; influenced by Canova and Flaxman; the O’Connell monument one of his most elaborate designs; his early work resembles late classical art. [121]
Anne Cruikshank & the Knight of Glin [Desmond Fitzgerald], Irish Portraits 1600-1860 [Catalogue] (1969), p.89, cites W. C. Monkhouse, The Works of John Henry Foley (London 1875).
There is a portrait of J. H. Foley by Thomas Mogford (see Anne Crookshank, Ulster
Mus. 1965).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)