John Hogan

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. Working primarily from Rome, among his best known works are three versions of The Dead Christ, commissioned for churches in Dublin, Cork, and the Basilica of St. John the Baptist in Newfoundland, Canada. 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. Move to Rome In 1821, Hogan carved twenty-seven statues in wood for the North Chapel in Cork for the reredos behind the high altar. After subsequent cathedral renovations, these are now positioned in decorative plasterwork over the nave. He also did a bas-relief of the "Last Supper" for the altar. This work kept him employed for about a year.