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Dublin Sculptures Past and Present

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  • Dublin Sculptures Past and Present

    Simple really, just post an image from any timeline of a public scuplture that stands or stood in Dublin or Dublin County with a bit about the background if it's not a well known person/subject and the artist who created it, include it's whereabouts if since moved.

    Field Marshall Viscount Hugh Gough, Phoenix Park

    Dedicated 22nd February 1880

    Subject and present location:
    Waymarking.com
    It is situated just 25m inside the grounds of Chillingham Castle some and can be seen from the Lilburn to Chillingham road.

    Gough is depicted in the uniform of Colonel of the Guards reviewing his regiment, field-marshal’s baton in right hand. The gun metal from which the statue is cast weighs fifteen tons.

    The statue has had a troubled history. At the time of his death in 1869, Gough's friends felt that since he was born in Co. Limmerick and, when not on military service, had always lived in his native land, a statue on a prominent site in Dublin was appropriate, at either Carlisle Bridge, Foster Place or Westmoreland Road. However, the Dublin Corporation was reluctant to commemorate a servant of the empire who had gained the nickname the 'Hammer of the Sikhs', and vetoed each of these suggestions. A commission for a commemorative statue was subsequently given to the Irish-born J. H. Foley who was keen to take it on, declaring 'I need scarcely repeat how gratifying the task would be to me, and how willing I am to forgo all consideration of profit in my desire to engage myself upon it. I feel that the time has arrived for our native country to add to the memorials of her illustrious dead an Equestrian Statue, and that Lord Gough at once presents a worthy subject for such a memorial.'

    Unfortunately, however, Foley died in 1874 before the work had been completed and it was finished by his leading pupil, Thomas Brock, as an inscription on the base apparently once noted. The latter ensured that he received due credit for his work by exhibiting a study for the head at the Royal Academy in 1878. In addition, a shortage of funds meant that the horse had to be made from a cast which Foley had used for another work, his renowned statue of Viscount Hardinge in Calcutta (1858; private collection, Kent). Hardinge’s horse, it should be noted, had been especially admired when first exhibited in 1859: so much so indeed that as the Art Journal commented at the time, 'Arab horse-dealers, with whom the love of the horse is a passion, and knowledge of their points of excellence a universal acquirement, are daily to be seen gazing at it.'

    Once finished the statue's problems continued. A site was found for it in Phoenix Park, Dublin, but at the time of the inauguration there was a strong feeling that it would have been more suitably erected in London. This was reinforced by the inauguration ceremony at which so many soldiers were present that the Duke of Malborough, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, was prompted to remark that the Park looked like the 'Champs de Mars of Dublin'. Once in place, because it was subsequently seen as a celebration of empire, the statue was physically attacked on a number of occasions. On Christmas Eve 1944 the rider was beheaded and his sword removed. In November 1956 the right hind leg of the horse was blown off and then finally, at 12.45am on Monday 3rd July 1957, the whole statue was hurled from its base by a huge explosion, the work of experts in plastic bombing brought in from France by the I.R.A. Following this, for the next 29 years, the base remained in place in Phoenix Park while the statue itself was kept in storage by the Office of Public Works at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham. (Photographs exist of Gough's severed head sitting in a cupboard.) Eventually, in August 1986, the statue was sold to Robert Guinness of Straffan, Co. Kildare for a sum believed to be £1000 or less, on the condition, according to the Irish Times, that it left Ireland. In 1988, it came into the possession of its present owner, a distant relative of Gough, who had it painstakingly restored by the Newcastle blacksmiths, J. S. Lunn and Sons and re-erected at his newly acquired home, Chillingham Castle, in 1990. The statue is now once again complete except for the 18cm high base of the pedestal.

    Field Marshall Viscount Gough (1779-1869) is said to have commanded in more general actions than any other British officer of his time apart from Wellington. In the Peninsula War he distinguished himself by his bravery and dash and was knighted in 1815. For services in China in 1814 he was created a baronet and made commander-in-chief in India. After a pyrrhic victory over the Sikhs at Chillanwallah in 1849 his star went temporarily into decline. However, victory at Goojerat in the same year quickly restored his reputation and he died a viscount.


    Sculptor: John Henry Foley

    Wiki
    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.[2] His father was a glass-blower and his step-grandfather Benjamin Schrowder was a sculptor.[3] 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.[4]
    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.

  • #2
    The O’Connell Monument
    Dedicated 1882, Sculptor John Henry Foley and finished by Brock after his death in 1874.






    The decision to commemorate Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847) with a monument in Sackville Street was an important move away from commemorating only members of the Castle administration or the British royal family. Although, at around the same time a monument to Prince Albert was also planned and the Dublin City committee, chaired by the lord mayor, had been recognised by Queen Victoria as the official committee. By April 1862, five months before John Gray inaugurated the appeal for subscriptions of the O’Connell monument, over £2,000 had been collected for the Albert monument in Dublin alone. The origins of the O’Connell monument project date back to 1847 when, after his funeral, a fund was promoted by several newspapers and the Hierarchy authorised church door collections. The O’Connell Monument Committee was established following a public meeting in the Prince of Wales Hotel on Sackville Street. The committee adopted the resolution that, ‘the monument would be to O’Connell in his whole character and career, from the cradle to the grave so as to embrace the whole nation.With £8,362 already banked, the two-ton Dalkey granite foundation stone was laid on 8 August 1864 by Lord Mayor Peter Paul McSwiney. The ceremony to lay the foundation stone marked the first stage in what was to become a dominant landmark and an overt political statement, the occasion brought thousands on to the streets of the capital.

    The sculptural composition formed three sections, a statue of O’Connell at the top, a frieze in the middle – at the centre of which was represented the ‘Maid of Erin’, her right hand raised pointing to O’Connell, her liberator, and in her left hand the 1829 Act of Catholic Emancipation. Nearly thirty more figures symbolise the Church, the professions, the arts, the trades and the peasantry. At the base are four winged victories, each of which represented the virtues attributed to O’Connell – patriotism, courage, eloquence and fidelity. There is evidence of bullet holes in two of the victories, a legacy of 1916-1922. The overall height of the monument is 40 feet, the bronze statue of O’Connell wrapped in his cloak is 12 feet high. The figure of O’Connell was ready for unveiling at the head of Sackville Street on 15 August 1882, which was also the centenary of the Volunteer Movement and the occasion of the Industrial and Agricultural Exhibition in the Rotunda Gardens, bringing thousands from the provinces. The monument was unveiled at one o’clock to a ‘mighty roar…..from ten thousand throats when the veil fell at the Lord Mayor’s signal’. The committee delivered the statue over to the care of the corporation which the Lord Mayor accepted with a few brief remarks, and ‘with a quick touch withdrew the covering from the Herculean figure of O’Connell. At that instant the sun suddenly opened its beams through he drenching rain and gloriously lighted up the Monument and the crowded platform.’

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