FOLEY, John Henry (1818-1874), sculptor, R.A., was born at Dublin, May 24, 1818. Through a distant relative, a sculptor in the city, his attention was early directed to the profession which was to occupy his life, and at thirteen he began to study drawing and modelling at the schools of the Royal Dublin Society, where he took several first-class prizes. In 1834 he proceeded to London, and in 1835 was admitted a student in the schools of the Royal Academy. He first appeared as an exhibitor in 1839 with his Death of Abel and Innocence. Ino and Bacchus, exhibited in 1840, gave him immediate reputation, and the work itself was afterwards commissioned to be done in marble for the earl of Ellesmere. Conceived entirely without classical or other affectation, this work has the charm of rare simplicity and grace. Lear and Cordelia and Death of Lear were exhibited in 1841, Venus rescuing Aeneas and The Houseless Wanderer in 1842, Prospero and Miranda in 1843. In 1844 Foley sent to the exhibition at Westminster Hall his Youth at a Stream, and was, with Calder Marshall and John Bell, chosen by the commissioners to do work in sculpture for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament. Statues of John Hampden and Selden were executed for this purpose, and received liberal praise for the propriety, dignity, and proportion of their treatment. Commissions of all kinds now began to come rapidly, and without going out of his way to seek it, Foley had from this time until his death work sufficient to occupy not only the whole of his own time, but also that of the numerous assistants and pupils whom he trained. Fanciful works, busts, bas-reliefs, tablets, and monumental statues were in great numbers undertaken and executed by him with that steady equality of worthy treatment which is perhaps ...