MR. FOLEY'S BEQUEST TO DUBLIN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 151, 24 March 1876, Page 6

MR. FOLEY'S BEQUEST TO DUBLIN.

The London correspondent of the 'Freeman,' in giving an account of the provisions of the will of the great Irish sculptor, thus refers to the bequest to Dublin : — The next bequest is a remarkable one. In the year 1831 Mr. Foley, at the age of thirteen, became a student of the Royal Dublin Society, and there he obtained the first prizes for the study of the human form, animals, architecture, and modelling. In |1834 he came to the Royal Academy in London, but throughout his successes in later years he remembered with affection and gratitude the srene of his triumphs. It was his strong desire to leave to his native city a lasting and worthy memorial of himself. He directs ths-t all the original models of his works shall be given to the Royal Dublin Society ; and a moment's reflection on the character of the works produced from these models will show the value of this bequest to the Society, and to the students who may be seeking to follow the profession of which he was so bright a luminary. This bequest is followed by a provision that, should the Society not accept the models, they shall be disposed of by gift as the executors think fit. The same writer, in another letter, enumerates the models. He says: This collection comprises the statues and monuments of the late Prince-Consort for the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park, Cambridge, Dublin, and Birmingham ; the four splendid figures in the* Asia group of the Albert Memorial j the statues of Burke, Grattan, Goldsmith, Sir D. Corrigan, Sir James Outram, Lord Herbert, Sir Henry Marsh, Mr. Rathbone (of Liverpool), Professor Stokes, Faraday, Lord Carlisle, Lord Elphinstone, Selden, and Hampden (in St. Stephen's Hall, Westminster), Sir Charles Barry, Lord Olive, Lord Canning, General Stonewall Jackson, Sir Benjamin Guinness, and Mr. Filden; the classical studies, "Ino and Bacchus" and " JEgeria," " The Mother," " The Parsee," numerous bas-relievos for mural monuments, such as the Rathbone Memorial in Liverpool, and lastly the O'Connell Monument. Almost, if not abso-* lutely, the whole of these are of the same size as the final works produced from them, and are almost as minutely finished in detail. The people of Dublin have thus an opportunity of seeing in one gallery over thirty of Mr. Foley's finest productions, and so large a collection of any eminent sculptor's works has not, I believe, before been possessed. _^ .