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Life
| b. Tallow, Co Waterford; raised in Cork, and ed. School of Art at Cork; worked in solicitor’s office; wood-carver with Woodward & Deane; worked for Dr Murphy, Bishop of Cork, carving 27 statues in wood and bas-relief for North Chapel; went to Rome with support of subscription and patronage of Lord de Tabley, working and residing there, 1824-49; converted to neo-classicism; revisited Ireland, 1829, 1840, &c.; refused Royal Hibernian Academy offer of membership; elected to Vir Tuosi del Pantheon, 1837; placed ‘Repeal cap’ on O’Connell’s head at Mullaghmast, Co. Kildare, 1843; |
returned to live in Ireland 1848 [var. 1849], as a result of the Italy revolution but disappointed by reception in post-Famine conditions; Irish works incl. ‘The Dead Christ’ (Carmelite Church, in Clarendon St. Dublin, 1828); Theobald Mathew (1840, 1844); James Warren Doyle (Carlow Cath., 1840); Daniel O’Connell (City Hall, Dublin, 1846, and the Crescent, Limerick, 1857); Thomas Drummond (City Hall, with motto, ‘Property has its duties as well as its rights’); Thomas Davis (Mount St Jerome, 1853), Robert Graves (Royal College of Physicians, Dublin, 1853); a ‘Drunken Faun’ (UCD); also ‘Eve’, in Rome; |
d. 27 March, 14 Wentworth Place, Dublin; his widow and children assisted by subscription raised by William Carleton, who wrote a tribute in the Irish Quarterly Review; his Italian wife was figured on the watermark of the Irish currency, 1922-77. ODNB BREF DIB DIH |
Criticism
John Turpin, John Hogan, Irish Neo-Classical Sculptor in Rome (1982),
216pp., port. by Mulrenan; bibliographical study included in Sarah Atkinson, Essays (Dublin 1895).
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References
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; this ed. 1984); John Hogan, b. Cork, 1800; studied plaster casts of antique statuary recently presented to the Cork Arts Society; early classical work includes a drunken faun (praised by Thorwaldsen), a Roman soldier, and a Minerva (1822). Studied at Rome after 1823, visiting Vatican and Capitoline museums; became first Irish or English member of Virtuosi del Pantheon in 1837; his Drunken Faun only survives in plaster casts in Dublin and Cork; his Shepherd Boy in Iveagh House; portrait statue of Bishop James Doyle (JKL) in Carlow Cathedral combines classicism and naturalism. (p.122.)
John Mitchel, The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps) (Glasgow 1861): "The hill of Mullaghmast, like that of Tara, is crowned by a Rath, or ancient earthen rampart, enclosing about three acres. / To this meeting it was supposed that additional importance would be given, if the members of the town corporations of Leinster should repair thither in their corporate robes. O’Connell took the chair in the scarlet cloak of Alderman. There had lately been invented a “national cap,” modelled after the form of an ancient Irish crown. One of these was prepared, splendidly embroidered, wherewith to crown O’Connell on the Rath of Mullaghmast; and it was with great ceremony placed on his head by John Hogan, the first of Irish sculptors. We [37] read in the papers of the day how the Liberator’s face beamed with pleasure when Hogan placed the cap upon his head, saying— “Sir, I only regret that this cap is not of gold.”’ (pp.36-37.)
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Notes
Crowning moment: Hogan placed the ‘famous Repeal cap’ on Daniel O’Connell’s head at the Mullaghmast monster meeting in Co. Kildare, 1843; see Fergus O’Ferrall, ‘Daniel O’Connell, Changing Images’, Kennedy & R. Gillespie, eds., Ireland: Art into History (1994), p.99.
Portrait: There is an oil portrait of Hogan by Charles Grey; see Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits (Ulster Museum 1965). See also port. by [?Wm.] Mulrennan, in Turpin’s biography, as supra.
Dan O’Connell: Hogan’s statue of Daniel O’Connell in a toga stands in the Rotunda of the City Hall, Dublin, along with others by him of Charles Lucas, Wm. Drummond, Henry Grattan and Thomas Davis. [See History of the Rotunda - online.]
Sunny Jim?: Peter Costello writes in James Joyce: The Years of Growth, 1882-1915, London: Kyle Cathie 1992)): ‘Peter McSwiney was the founder of the story that is now Clerys, and had issue including a son Paul Peter who died before him, who married a daughter of James Hogan [sic], the Cork-born sculptor [sic]. his sister [...] was married to the painter Michael Angelo Hayes.’ (q.p.)
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