1818 - 1874

Sculptor. Born in Dublin. His elder brother, Henry, preceded him in the sculptor’s profession. J.H. Foley entered the Royal Dublin Society’s School in 1831. He became a student at the Royal Academy in London in 1835. In 1839, his Death of Abel and Innocence were favourably received at the Royal Academy exhibition, and in the following year the Earl of Ellesmere commissioned a group of Ino and Bacchus. Following the exhibition of Youth at the Stream at the Westminster Hall Exhibition of 1844, Foley received commissions for statues of Hampden (1847) and Selden (1853), for the Houses of Parliament. During the 1850s he produced two of the most highly praised statues in the series commissioned for the Egyptian Hall of the Mansion House. After the death of Prince Albert, Foley created for Cambridge University a memorial statue of Albert (1866), now in the village of Madingley, Cambs. When the sculptor Marochetti, who had been given the commission for the statue of the Prince for the Albert Memorial, died in 1867, the commission was given to Foley. His colossal gilt bronze statue of the prince was completed after Foley’s death by his pupil, Thomas Brock. Foley also sculpted the allegorical group of Asia for the memorial. For his birthplace, Dublin, Foley produced the ambitious monument to Daniel O’Connell (1866). His equestrian statue of Viscount Hardinge (1858) for Calcutta, was described by the Art Journal as ‘a masterpiece of art’. A later equestrian statue, also for Calcutta, of Sir James Outram (1864) was more complex and dynamic in its movement. Foley introduced a degree of naturalistic sensuality into the sculptural idiom of the day, without relaxing compositional control. He became a full RA in 1858.