John Hogan (14 October 1800 – 27 March 1858) was a sculptor from Tallow, County Waterford in Ireland. Described in some sources as the "greatest of Irish sculptors", according to the Dictionary of Irish Biography he was responsible for "much of the most significant religious sculpture in Ireland" during the 19th century.

Early life and apprenticeship

John Hogan was born on 14 October 1800 in Tallow, County Waterford, the third child of John Hogan, a carpenter and builder of Cove Street, Cork and Frances Cos, the great-granddaughter of Sir Richard Cox, Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1703 to 1707. As the family felt that she had married beneath her station, she was disinherited.

At the age of fourteen, Hogan was placed as clerk to an attorney, where he spent much of his time carving figures in wood. After two years, he chose to be apprenticed to the architect Sir Thomas Deane, where his talents for drawing and carving were developed. He carved balusters, capitals, and ornamental figures for Deane's buildings. At the completion of his apprenticeship in March 1820, Deane encouraged him to consider taking up sculpture as a profession. For the next three years, Hogan attended lectures on anatomy, copied casts of classic statuary in the Gallery of the Cork Society of Arts, and made anatomical studies in wood of feet, hands, and legs. Among the first of his works to attract notice was a life-size figure of Minerva for an insurance building built by Deane. He also did a bas-relief of the "Last Supper" for the altar. This work kept him employed for about a year.

In 1823, the engraver William Paulet Carey visited Cork, and impressed with Hogan's talent began to publicise his work in order to raise subscriptions for him to study in Italy. Hogan arrived in Rome, by way of Dublin and Liverpool, in 1824. He worked in the galleries of the Vatican, but could not afford a studio. Additional subscriptions allowed him to improve his situation, rent a studio, purchase marble, and hire models. Danish sculptor Bertel Thorwaldsen said to him, "My son, you are the best sculptor I leave after me in Rome".

In 1840, a monumental group in memory of Bishop Doyle, founder of Carlow Cathedral was brought to Dublin and exhibited at the Royal Exchange. the statue of Bishop Doyle is in the Cathedral of the Assumption, Carlow, as is a second Hogan work depicting the Holy Family.

Later life and death

thumb|upright|Plaque in Tallow at the parish hall to commemorate John Hogan

Hogan married Cornelia Bevignani in Rome in 1838. The figure of Hibernia, in Hogan's work Hibernia with the Bust of Lord Cloncurry (1844), was reportedly modelled on his wife. (A representation of this work was later used as the watermark on all Series A banknotes printed in Ireland from the 1920s to the 1970s.) The couple had four sons and eight daughters.

References

  • John Hogan at Irish Graves
  • Photo of Bishop Doyle sculpture, Carlow Cathedral