feb1869

Moving statue of O'Connell

from National Library of Ireland on The Commons

• 27 older comments, and then…
• Sharon Corbet said:

  Both the statue and the plinth are still at City Hall - the statue has been moved inside (seen on the left in this panorama photo), whereas the plinth has been moved to the side (Streetview of plinth.)

• National Library of Ireland on The Commons said:

  Well done Sharon, now show how good you are by getting Dan's baptismal records in his parish register:-)

• Sharon Corbet said:

  National Library of Ireland on The Commons Unfortunately, the Caherciveen recordsdon't go back that far :-)

• Carol Maddock said:

  The sculptor was Waterford-born John Hogan:

  For at the time that he began to work on the statue, about 1844, O'Connell was long past the prime of manhood . He was, in fact, nearly seventy and had only a few years to live. There was no longer anything of the Greek athlete about him — if ever there had been. Always a big man, he had grown rather fleshy. But Hogan, being a great and highly sensitive artist, was able to give refined statement to the unrefined fact of O'Connell's prodigious physique. Thus, without denying that here and there O'Connell tended unduly to bulge, he designed the classical folds of the mantle to carry one over to the dignity, one might indeed say to the majesty, of the figure as a whole, to the heroic proportions and movement, the splendid shoulders, the magnificently poised head. Again, there is no denial of the unclassical pugnaciousness of the O'Connell chin, but how Hogan balances it by insisting on the fine lines about the mouth, suggestive of mobility, of eloquence, of charm, of humour. Here is where one realises that all the stories of O'Connell's genius as an orator must be absolutely true.

  Some Statues by John Hogan by Thomas MacGreevy in The Father Mathew Record, August 1943

• Carol Maddock said:

  Three degrees of separation from Library Towers - John Hogan was apprenticed to Thomas Deane, father of Thomas Newenham Deane, who designed the National Library and National Museum buildings...