Introduction
culptor John Hughes was born and raised in Ireland, and was educated by the Christian Brothers at O'Connell School, Dublin. However, at the age of just 13, he began pursuing a course that would take him to London and the Continent. From 1878 to 1888 he was a student at Dublin's Metropolitan School of Art. His break came in 1890, when at the age of twenty-five he won a prestigious scholarship to attend London's South Kensington School of Art. Another scholarship enabled him to study in Paris and travel in Italy. In 1894 he returned to Dublin to become a teacher at his alma mater. By 1902, Hughes was Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Hibernian Academy School, and in 1905 he was one of the founding members of the Royal Society of Sculptors.
The next year, however, he moved out of his rooms on Lennox Street, and returned to Paris to work on what would turn out to be his greatest commission: Ireland's monument to the late Queen Victoria outside Leinster House, unveiled in February 1908. The Queen had visited the Irish provincial capital in April 1900, and had died only nine months later. The people of Ireland had initially welcomed the possibility of erecting a monument to celebrate her reign, but nationalist sentiment in the 1920s resulted in a generally negative opinion of the great bronze statue: the Queen was regarded her as the Patroness of the Hungry Forties. As Randolph Churchill commented in an article published on the front page of The Irish Times in November 1945: “The largest and ugliest statue in Dublin is outside the Dáil, and is of Queen Victoria — denounced throughout Ireland in the last century as the famine queen.” The statue, so long derided, was finally packed away in 1948, and its site converted into a car-park.
Eventually, Hughes's masterpiece travelled overseas. The Irish Times reported its destination on 2 October 1986, with a piece headlined: “Statue of Victoria given to Sydney.” Cleaned and repaired, from 1987 it occupied the place of honour in front of the refurbished Queen Victoria Building there. Only the three smaller statues from its base (Fame, Hibernia at Peace, and Hibernia at War, which featured Erin and the Dying Soldier as the Boer War memorial) remained in Ireland, in the collection of Dublin Castle. Hibernia at War can be seen in the Hibernia Rooftop Garden on top of the main conference hall, and is very moving.
Hughes's misfortunes were compounded when his next big commission, to commemorate William Gladstone, was affected by growing nationalism and the outbreak of World War I, and never erected in Dublin at all. This monument ended up in Hawarden, ouside the Gladstone library and close to the former Prime Minister's estate in Flintshire.
He did win acclaim in Ireland with a very characterful statue of George Salmon in the grounds of Dublin's Trinity College, and work in Loughrea Cathedral. But he had largely lost heart. After 1920, he stayed with one of his sisters in Florence before travelling extensively in France as well as Italy. He had given up sculpture and supported himself with his other artistic gift: music. He died in Nice on 6 June 1941. — Philip V. Allingham
Works
- Queen Victoria Monument (1908), now in Sydney, NSW
- Monument for George Salmon, Trinity College, Dublin (1911)
- Gladstone Monument, now in Hawarden, Flintshire (1925)
Bibliography
Lynch, Sighle Bhreathnach. "John Hughes: The Italian Connection." Irish Review, 1994-01 (vol. 10): 195-201.
"Mr John Hughes ARHA, RHA." Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011. Web. 27 February 2026. https://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/mapping/public/view/person.php?id=msib3_1204539504
"Queen Victoria." Monument Australia 2010-2026. Web. 27 February 2026. https://www.monumentaustralia.org/themes/people/imperial/display/23254-queen-victoria
Queen Victoria Statue, Leinster House, Dublin. Catholic Archives Catalogue. Web. 6 March 2026.
Turpin, John. "Nationalist and Unionist Ideology in the Sculpture of Oliver Sheppard and John Hughes, 1895-1939." Irish Review, 1997-01 (vol. 20): 62-75.
Created 26 February 2026