1935
Pádraic Ó Conaire
Bronze · Eyre Square, Galway
Power's most beloved work. Stolen in 1999, recovered and restored — its loss became a measure of how deeply it had embedded in Galway's identity.
View work →Irish Sculptor · 1881–1945
Albert George
Power
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 at work in his studio
Courtesy Irish Capuchin Archives, Dublin
"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
The Man & His Craft
Origins & Formation
Albert George Power was born in Dublin in 1881. He trained at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art under John Hughes and Oliver Sheppard, before studying at the Royal College of Art in London under Edouard Lantéri.
Power absorbed the naturalism of his teachers while developing a quieter, more contemplative register — reaching always for the particular rather than the allegorical.
Courtesy Irish Capuchin Archives
The Revolution & Its Commissions
Power worked at the hinge point of modern Irish history. In the summer of 1922 alone he made death masks of Cathal Brugha, Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, and Erskine Childers — four leaders 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 in 1945.
Legacy in Stone & Bronze
Power worked in Portland stone and cast bronze, often overseeing the casting himself. His ecclesiastical commissions for churches across Ireland are among the finest devotional sculpture of the period.
He died in 1945. The definitive scholarly account of his career is Judith Hill's Albert Power RHA 1881–1945 (Irish Academic Press, 2012). His funeral records are held at the Irish Capuchin Archives, Dublin.
Courtesy Irish Capuchin Archives
Selected Works
1922
Death Mask — Michael Collins
Plaster · National Museum of Ireland
Made within hours of Collins's death at Béal na Bláth. The most accurate physical record of his face in existence.
View work →
1922
Death Mask — Cathal Brugha
Plaster · Cathal Brugha Barracks
The first of Power's extraordinary 1922 sequence — Brugha died on 7 July, shot on O'Connell Street at the outbreak of the Civil War.
View work →
1926
Gresham Hotel Facade
Stone · O'Connell Street, Dublin
Urns, Coat of Arms, Ionic capitals, six panels of festoons, and two sphinxes — seen by everyone who walks Dublin's main street.
View work →A Life in Dates
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1881
Born in Dublin
Albert George Power is born in the city that will define his artistic life, in the final decades of Victorian Ireland.
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c. 1900
Dublin Metropolitan School of Art
Begins formal training, studying under Oliver Sheppard — the central figure of Irish Revival sculpture.
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1916
The Rising & Its Aftermath
The Easter Rising reshapes the cultural landscape of Ireland. Power's circle includes many figures at the heart of the national movement.
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1919
Elected RHA
Elected full member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, cementing his standing as one of Ireland's foremost sculptors.
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c. 1922
Michael Collins Portrait
Creates one of the defining portrait busts of the revolutionary leader, shortly after Collins's death in the Civil War.
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1935
Pádraic Ó Conaire Memorial
The Galway commission is unveiled in Eyre Square. It will become one of the most beloved public sculptures in Ireland.
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1945
Death in Dublin
Power dies, leaving a legacy in bronze and stone that endures across the parishes, galleries, and civic squares of Ireland.
Writing & Research
The Death Mask Summer: Power and the Revolutionary Dead of 1922
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 →The Galway Bronze: Pádraic Ó Conaire and the Weight of Public Memory
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 →A Face Without Myth: Power's Collins
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 →Master & Apprentice: Oliver Sheppard and the Making of Power's Eye
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 →About This Archive
My name is Mark Freer, Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Red Hat, Waterford. 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 within months of each other in 1922. He carved the facades of O'Connell Street. He made the Ó Conaire memorial that Galway wept for when it was stolen. His funeral records are held at the Irish Capuchin Archives, Dublin.
The photographs here come from our family archive and from the Irish Capuchin Archives. If you have photographs, letters, or knowledge of works not yet recorded, I would be glad to hear from you.