John Hughes (sculptor)

Hughes was born in Dublin and educated at North Richmond Street CBS. He entered the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin in 1878 and trained as a part-time student for ten years. In 1890 he won a scholarship to the South Kensington School of Art, London, after which another scholarship took him to Paris. He then studied further in Italy. He was appointed as teacher to the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin in 1894 and in 1902 became Professor of Sculpture in the Royal Hibernian Academy School. His last residence in Dublin was at 28 Lennox Street, Portobello. From 1903 he lived in Italy and in France; he died at Nice in 1941.

Statue of Queen Victoria in front of the National Library of Ireland (circa 1908)

In Ireland:

• Man of Sorrow; Madonna and Child, both 1901, for Loughrea Cathedral
• A dying Irish soldier overlooked by Erin, now in the garden of Dublin Castle Conference Centre
• Monument to Charles Kickham, in Tipperary.

Others:

• W. E. Gladstone Memorial, intended for the Phoenix Park, but installed instead at Hawarden in 1925.
• Queen Victoria, unveiled by King Edward VII in 1904 outside Leinster House in Dublin, re-erected in Sydney, Australia in 1987.

• Alan Denson: John Hughes, sculptor, 1865-1941: A documentary biography.