John Henry Foley was born in Dublin, Ireland on 24 May 1818. In 1831, at the age of thirteen, he entered the art school of the Royal Dublin Society where he studied modelling and drawing until 1834. In 1835 he moved to London to continue his training as an artist at the Royal Academy Schools. He also worked as a studio assistant to the sculptor William Behnes (1795-1864) until 1838. By the mid-1840s he had established a career as a portrait sculptor, much in demand. In c.1848 he set up his own studio at 19 Osnaburgh Street, Euston, London He began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in London in 1839 and continued to do so regularly until 1875, the year after his death. He also exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin from 1841 to 1863, and at the British Institution in London.
Foley primarily produced portrait statues, busts and monuments. Among his early commissions were marble statues of two seventeenth-century politicians, John Hampden (1847) and John Selden (1855), for the palace of Westminster. He executed three important statues of prominent figures from Irish history: the man of letters, Oliver Goldsmith (1863) and the political writer, Edmund Burke 1868) for Trinity College, Dublin; and national monument of the patriot Daniel O'Connell for O'Connell Street, Dublin, a work that took seventeen years to complete, from 1866 to 1883. Among the many busts executed by Foley were those of the politician Sir Charles Hulse (1856) for the Mint, Kolkata (Calcutta), India; and of the scientist Michael Faraday for the Royal Society in London.
Foley's most celebrated commission was the sculptural groups and the central seated figure of Prince Consort which he executed for the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens, London (1871).
Foley died at his home, The Priory, Upper Terrace, Hampstead, Middlesex [now London] on 27 August 1874.
Text source: Arts + Architecture Profiles from Art History Research net (AHRnet) https://www.arthistoryresearch.net/
