11 Facts About Margaret Foley

Margaret F Foley was an American sculptor who worked in a Neoclassical style.

Margaret Foley began with whittling and carving and became a self-taught prodigy in sculpture.

The daughter of a farmhand, Margaret Foley worked as a maid in order to afford her schooling, and later became a schoolteacher.

At the age of fourteen, Margaret Foley traveled to Lowell, Massachusetts to work in the spinning room of the Merrimack Corporation as a mill girl.

Margaret Foley learned this trade at Ednah Dow Cheney's School of Design for Women, which opened in 1850 to provide occupational training for single women in the domestic arts.

Margaret Foley continued to support herself as a cameo artist throughout her career as a sculptor, and she often received accolades for her cameos when they were exhibited.

Margaret Foley met Lorenza Haynes in Lowell, Massachusetts, and for nearly thirty years, till Foley's death, they remained friends.

Margaret Foley traveled with Charlotte Cushman and Emma Stebbins, both of whom were central figures in an expatriate community of American women sculptors and intellectuals that included Harriet Hosmer, Anne Whitney, Edmonia Lewis, Louisa Lander, Vinnie Ream, and others.

Margaret Foley sculpted biblical and historical subjects such as Jeremiah and Cleopatra, both of which were exhibited at the main Memorial Hall of the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.

Margaret Foley exhibited a large fountain at the Exposition's Horticultural Hall, consisting of three children supporting a marble basin adorned with acanthus leaves.

Margaret Foley died of a stroke in Meran, Austria, on December 7,1877, and was the only American woman sculptor to die at such a young age while residing in Europe.