John Henry Foley - Life

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.