Granite statues of St Patrick, St Brigid and St Colmcille on dome of Christ the King Church, Carndonagh, Co. Donegal
Albert Power, St Patrick, St Brigid, St Colmcille and the Sacred Heart, 1943–5, granite, Christ the King Church, Carndonagh, Co. Donegal.
Last updated
Date
1943–1945
Medium
Granite
Dimensions
8 feet 7 inches high; approx. 3.5 tons each
Location
Christ the King Church, Carndonagh, Co. Donegal
Collection
works

Among Power’s last major commissions, four monumental granite figures — St Patrick, St Brigid, St Colmcille, and the Sacred Heart — were carved between 1943 and 1945 for Christ the King Church in Carndonagh, Co. Donegal. According to a contemporary report in the Irish Press (11 July 1945), each statue stood 8 feet 7 inches high and weighed approximately three and a half tons — an extraordinary scale for work executed by Power in the final years of his life, when he was already in his sixties.

Carndonagh, on the Inishowen Peninsula, is one of the oldest Christian sites in Ireland, associated with St Patrick’s mission to the north. The placement of the three patron saints on the church dome — exposed to the Atlantic climate of Donegal — required granite rather than the limestone or marble Power used for interior work. The fourth figure, the Sacred Heart, completed the commission.

Power’s eldest son, Albert Power Jr., also a sculptor, collaborated with his father on this commission according to his own 1973 obituaries — one of several documented instances of father-and-son collaboration in the family’s final major works.

Power died on 10 July 1945, only months after completing this commission — described in his obituary as “among his outstanding works.”

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