Alexander Doyle

Alexander Doyle (1857–1922) was an American sculptor.

Doyle was born in Steubenville, Ohio, and spent his youth in Louisville, Kentucky and St. Louis, Missouri before going to Italy to study sculpture in Bergamo, Rome, and Florence.

After returning to the United States he settled in New York City, and became one of the nation's prominent sculptors of the era. There are three statues by Doyle in National Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C.: Thomas Hart Benton, Francis Preston Blair, Jr. and John E. Kenna

Alexander Doyle became a sculptor of marble and bronze monuments of historical figures including Civil War heroes and other prominent persons. He studied in Italy at the National Academies at Carrara, Rome, and Florence and was a member of the Royal Raphael Academy.

His work can be found throughout the United States including Washington DC, Missouri, Alabama, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Georgia and Mississippi.

In New Orleans where he was active from 1882 to 1883, he did a trio of important sculptures of Confederate Army generals around New Orleans. These are the city’s iconic figure of General Robert E. Lee at Lee Circle, dedicated in February 1884; the massive bronze equestrian of General P. G. T. Beauregard at the entrance to City Park (1915); and the bronze statue of General Albert Sydney Johnston atop the Army of the Tennessee cenotaph in Metairie Cemetery (1887). Some say Doyle's finest work is “Calling the Roll” (1885), a marble of an unknown Confederate soldier also in Metairie Cemetery.

A Doyle marble-depiction statue of Margaret Haughery (a New Orleans woman who devoted her life to the poor) was erected in 1889, the first monument to honor a female philanthropist in the United States.