Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hogan, John
HOGAN, JOHN (1800–1858), sculptor, born in 1800 at Tallow, co. Waterford, was the son of a builder, a member of the Irish family of Ui h-Ogain. Hogan's father settled in Cork, and in 1814 placed him in a solicitor's office, which he left on obtaining an engagement from an architect as a draughtsman and carver of models. Hogan carefully studied a collection of casts formed under the direction of Canova from antique statues at Rome, which had been presented to a Cork institution. After working at an anatomy school and executing several wood carvings, Hogan was in 1824 sent at the expense of friends to Rome to complete his art education. William Paulet Carey [q. v.], when on a visit to Cork, interested himself in the collection of funds, and through him Hogan came to know John Fleming Leicester, Lord de Tabley [q. v.], a munificent patron of the arts. At Rome Hogan's first work in marble was an Italian shepherd-boy. This was followed by ‘Eve, after expulsion from Paradise,’ founded on passages in Gesner's ‘Death of Abel.’ The originality and merits of Hogan's ‘Drunken Faun’ were much admired by Thorwaldsen and other eminent sculptors. Subscriptions, renewed in 1825, enabled Hogan to continue his work at Rome. He was elected an honorary member of the academy of the ‘virtuosi del Pantheon,’ and, with the exception of visits to Ireland in 1829 and 1840, he remained in Rome till 1849. The Italian revolutionary movements in that year led him to return to Ireland. He died at Dublin on 27 March 1858. Among his works, besides those already mentioned, was the ‘Dead Christ,’ which was engraved and commended in Italian artistic journals. This and other pieces of Hogan's sculpture were placed in churches at Dublin and Cork. Hogan also executed an allegorical figure of ‘Hibernia’ for Lord Cloncurry. The most important of his public statues were those of Bishop James Doyle, at Carlow; Bishop Brinkley at Cloyne and Dublin; Thomas Drummond, under-secretary for Ireland, and Daniel O'Connell in the city hall, Dublin; Thomas Osborne Davis, now in Mount Jerome cemetery near that city. A portrait of Hogan appeared in the ‘Dublin University Magazine’ in 1850.
[Carey's Memoirs of the Fine Arts, 1826; Irish Penny Journal, 1841; Dublin University Magazine, vol. xxxv.; Irish Quarterly Review, vol. viii.; Irish Monthly, 1874.]