Margaret Foley

Margaret Foley
Born	Margaret Foley 1827 Vermont, USA
Died	1877 Merano, Austria-Hungary
Nationality	American
Education	Self-taught
Known for	Sculpture
Notable work	Cleopatra, 1876 Marble Relief of Pasuccia, 1865

Margaret F. Foley (1827–1877) was an American sculptor.

Early years

Born in northern Vermont in 1827, Margaret Foley was a self-taught sculptor. She began whittling and carving in the rural city of Vergennes, Vermont, where she grew up.^[1] The daughter of a farmhand, Foley worked as a maid in order to afford her schooling, and later became a schoolteacher.^[2] Foley traveled to Lowell, MA to work in a textile mills as a mill girl, but moved to Boston in 1848 to work as cameo portrait artist.^[1]

Career

Horticultural Hall fountain (1874-76), West Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 1860, with the assistance of a Vermont politician who recognized her talent, she emigrated to Rome to study and grow her career as a sculptor.^[2] Here, she began to sculpt large marble medallion portraits—for example, a portrait of the poet William Cullen Bryant—as well as portrait busts in the round, such as the 1877 bust of Theodore Parker. She also sculpted biblical and historical subjects such as Jeremiah and Cleopatra, both of which were exhibited at the main Memorial Hall of the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. Foley also exhibited a large fountain at the Exposition's Horticultural Hall, consisting of three children supporting a marble basin adorned with acanthus leaves (now in the Fairmount Park Horticultural Center, Philadelphia, PA).^[1]

Death

Despite gaining many commissions and praise for her "crisply delineated, noble style", Foley was suffering from a debilitating neurological illness, which would eventually take her life in 1877.^[1]

Works

• Aboliltionist, 1860
• Mrs. William Greenleaf Eliot, marble relief, 1864^[3]
• Marble Relief of Pasuccia, 1865^[4]
• William Cullen Bryant, 1867^[5]
• Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. E.H.R. Lyman, 1868
• Group of the Infant Bacchus with a Kid, 1871
• Portrait Relief in Profile, 1874
• Fountain, Centennial Exposition, Horticultural Hall, Philadelphia, 1874-1876^[6]
• Cleopatra, 1876^[7]
• Bust of Theodore Parker, 1877

• 

  Jenny Lind (1869), High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia.

• 

  Cleopatra (1876), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

References

1. Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein (1982). American women artists: from early Indian times to the present. Avon. p. 87,88,89. ISBN 978-0-8161-8535-1. Retrieved 29 March 2013.
2. "Margaret Foley". Luce Foundation Center for American Art. Retrieved 29 March 2013.
3. "Object List, 19th Century Art". Women Artists in the Washington University Collections. Retrieved 29 March 2013.
4. "Marble Relief of Pasuccia on Stand". Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved 29 March 2013.
5. "William Cullen Bryant". Collections Database Five Colleges and Historic Deerfield Museum Consortium. Retrieved 29 March 2013.
6. "Miss Foley's fountain-Horticultural Hall". Free Library of Philadelphia.
7. "Cleopatra". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved March 29, 2013.