Irish Sculptor · 1881–1945
Royal Hibernian Academician
Carver of memory. Caster of a nation's grief and pride in bronze and stone. From the lanes of Dublin to the squares of Connacht, Power's sculptures stand as quiet custodians of the Irish twentieth century.
Discover his world
Albert G. Power RHA
Power family archive
"He brought to his work a profound understanding of the Irish character — a sculptor not of heroic posture but of quiet, enduring humanity."
— Contemporary critical account, 1942
Albert George Power was born in Dublin in 1881, into a city whose cultural life was stirring with the energies of the Irish Revival. He entered the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, where he came under the influence of John Hughes and Oliver Sheppard — central figures in bringing a distinctly Irish sensibility to academic sculpture.
Power subsequently trained at the Royal College of Art in London under Edouard Lantéri, acquiring a rigorous grounding in modelling and anatomy that would underpin all his subsequent work.
Power worked at the hinge point of modern Irish history. His nationalist convictions were deeply felt and personal: during Easter Week 1916, he went to the GPO to offer help to the Pearse brothers. His close friendship with Willie Pearse — formed at the DMSA — and his circle of nationalist students had shaped those convictions from his earliest years as a sculptor.
In the summer of 1922 alone he made death masks of Cathal Brugha, Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, and Erskine Childers — four leaders of the independence movement dead within months of each other. No other sculptor was trusted so completely across the fault lines of the Civil War.
Elected a full member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1919, he exhibited there from 1906 until his death. His portrait commissions brought him into contact with the writers, politicians, and churchmen who shaped the new Irish state.
Power worked primarily in Portland stone and cast bronze, often overseeing the casting himself — giving him a control over surface and patina unusual among Irish sculptors of the period. His ecclesiastical commissions for churches across Ireland are among the finest examples of devotional sculpture produced in early twentieth-century Ireland.
He died in 1945, leaving a body of work across church interiors, civic squares, and gallery collections throughout Ireland. The Judith Hill monograph Albert Power RHA 1881–1945 (Irish Academic Press, 2012) remains the definitive scholarly account of his career.
Bronze · Eyre Square, Galway
Power's most beloved work — a seated figure intimate in scale yet monumental in presence. Stolen in 1999, recovered, and restored to Eyre Square, its loss and return became a measure of how deeply it had embedded in Galway's identity.
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Plaster · National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks
Made within hours of Collins's death at Béal na Bláth. The most accurate physical record of his face in existence — the direct basis for the 1936 bronze portrait bust in the National Gallery.
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Plaster · Cathal Brugha Barracks, Dublin
The first of Power's extraordinary 1922 sequence — Brugha died on 7 July, shot on O'Connell Street two days after the outbreak of the Civil War.
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Plaster · National Museum of Ireland
Griffith died on 12 August 1922 — ten days before Collins. Power made masks of both men within a fortnight, capturing the two architects of the Free State at the moment of its birth.
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Stone · O'Connell Street, Dublin
Urns, Coat of Arms, Ionic capitals, six panels of festoons, and two sphinxes — Power's most publicly visible architectural commission, seen by everyone who walks Dublin's main street.
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Stone · Government Buildings, Dublin
One of Power's earliest major public commissions — the allegorical figure now presides over the seat of Irish government on Merrion Street.
View work →Albert George Power is born in the city that will define his artistic life, in the final decades of Victorian Ireland.
Wins a book prize at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art for success in the Special Local Competition — the beginning of a distinguished student career.
Studies under John Hughes and Oliver Sheppard. Classmates include Kathleen Fox, Willie Pearse, Grace Gifford, and Countess Markievicz.
Early bronze Mother and Child — one of his first exhibited works to attract serious critical attention. Private collection.
Major architectural commission — a full-length figure for the facade of Government Buildings, Merrion Street, Dublin.
Elected full member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, cementing his standing as one of Ireland's foremost sculptors.
In the space of weeks Power makes death masks of Cathal Brugha (July), Arthur Griffith (August) and Michael Collins (August) — three leaders dead at the birth of the Free State.
Urns, sphinxes, coat of arms and festoons for the rebuilt Gresham Hotel — seen daily by everyone who walks O'Connell Street.
The Galway commission is unveiled in Eyre Square in Durrow limestone — the first time a native stone was used for such a purpose. 10,000 people attend the Liam Lynch unveiling the same year.
Full-length limestone figure of Bishop Laurence Gillooly for the Community Hall in Sligo town, completed in April and unveiled in May.
Bronze relief of Robert Emmet for Emmet Bridge, Harold's Cross — inscription carved by his son Oliver. The Thomas Kettle monument in St Stephen's Green finally erected after 21 years.
Bronze portrait of W.B. Yeats for the National Gallery. Limestone Pikeman for Denny Street, Tralee — replacing one toppled by the Black and Tans in 1921. St Patrick carved for Skerries church — with a hidden goat.
Power dies in July 1945. His final work — the Sacred Heart for Carndonagh church, Co. Donegal — was photographed in progress in his Berkeley Road yard. The Irish Press calls him 'one of our greatest sculptors.'
In the summer of 1922, within weeks of each other, three of the most significant figures of the Irish independence movement died. Albert Power made death masks of all three. No ...
Read essay →There is a particular quality of attention that settles around Albert Power's seated figure of Pádraic Ó Conaire in Eyre Square, Galway — not the attention of monument, but of p...
Read essay →How does a sculptor make a portrait of a man who is already becoming legend? Power's answer was restraint — and it produced the most honest image we have of Michael Collins.
Read essay →The influence of Oliver Sheppard on Power's work is acknowledged but rarely examined closely. This essay attempts that examination, tracing what passed between them and — perhap...
Read essay →My name is Mark Freer. Albert George Power RHA was my great-grandfather. I built this archive because his work deserves to be seen — not just by art historians and curators, but by anyone who walks past the Gresham Hotel, visits Eyre Square in Galway, or stands at the grave of Michael Collins in Glasnevin.
Power worked at the hinge point of modern Irish history. He made death masks of Collins, Griffith, Brugha, and Childers — four of the principal figures of the independence struggle — within months of each other in 1922. He carved the facades of Dublin's O'Connell Street. He made the Ó Conaire memorial that Galway wept for when it was stolen. And yet he remains largely unknown outside specialist circles.
This site is a family project. The photographs here come from our family archive — many taken by family members who tracked down his works across Ireland over decades. The research is ongoing. If you have photographs, letters, documents, or knowledge of works not yet recorded here, I would be genuinely grateful to hear from you.
I am a Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Red Hat, based in Waterford, Ireland, and a postgraduate student in Artificial Intelligence at SETU.