John Henry Foley

John Henry Foley RA (Dublin 24 May 1818 – 27 August 1874 London), often referred to as JH Foley, was an Irish sculptor, working in London. he is best known for his statues of Daniel O'Connell in Dublin, and of Prince Albert for the Albert Memorial in London.

Foley was born 24 May 1818, at 6 Montgomery Street, Dublin, in what was then the city's artists' quarter. The street has since been renamed Foley Street in his honour. His father was a glass-blower and his step-grandfather Benjamin Schrowder was a sculptor. At the age of 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 as a student in the schools of the Royal Academy in London. He exhibited there for the first time in 1839, and 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.

When, in 1851, inspired by the recently closed Great Exhibition, the Corporation of London voted a sum of £10,000 to be spent on sculpture to decorate the Egyptian Hall in the Mansion House, Foley was commissioned to make sculptures of Caractacus and Egeria.

In 1864 he was chosen to sculpt one of the four large stone groups, each representing a continent, at the corners of George Gilbert Scott's 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 bronze statue of Prince Albert himself, to be placed at the centre of the memorial, following the death of Carlo Marochetti, who had originally received the commission, but had struggled to produce an acceptable version.

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