Born in Padua, 1872. Pupil of Ottin in Paris, and of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome.
The principal works of this sculptor are a "Bacchante," now in St. Petersburg; "Najade," sold in London; "The Virgin Mother," purchased by Cavaliere Alinari of Florence; portrait of the Minister Merlo, which was ordered by the Ministry of Public Instruction. Many other less important works are in various Italian and foreign cities.
Signora Focca is a professor of drawing in the Normal Schools of Rome.
Foley, Margaret E. A native of New Hampshire. Died in 1877. Without a master, in the quiet of a country village, Miss Foley modelled busts in chalk and carved small figures in wood. At length she made some reputation in Boston, where she cut portraits and ideal heads in cameo. She went to Rome and remained there. She became an intimate friend of Mr. and Mrs. Howitt, and died at their summer home in the Austrian Tyrol.
Among her works are busts of Theodore Parker, Charles Sumner, and others; medallions of William and Mary Howitt, Longfellow, and Bryant; and several ideal statues and bas-reliefs.
In a critical estimate of Miss Foley we read: "Her head of the somewhat impracticable but always earnest senator from Massachusetts—Sumner—is unsurpassable and beyond praise. It is simple, absolute truth, embodied in marble."—Tuckerman's Book of the Artists.
"Miss Foley's exquisite medallions and sculptures ought to be reproduced in photograph. Certainly she was a most devoted artist, and America has not had so many sculptors among women that she can afford to forget any one of them."—Boston Advertiser, January, 1878.
Fontaine, Jenny. Silver medal, Julian Academy, 1889; silver medal at Amiens Exposition, 1890 and 1894; honorable mention, Paris Salon, 1892; gold medal at Rouen Exposition, 1893; third-class medal, Salon, 1896; bronze medal, Paris Exposition, 1900. Officer of the Academy, 1896; Officer of Public Instruction, 1902. Member of the Société des Artistes Français, Paris; Société de l'Union Artistique, du Pas-de-Calais, at Arras; corresponding member of the Academy of Arras. Pupil of Jules Lefebvre and Benjamin-Constant.
Mlle. Fontaine paints portraits only—of these she has exhibited regularly at the Salons for sixteen years. Among her sitters have been many persons of distinction, both men and women.
At the Salon of 1902 she exhibited her own portrait; in 1903, portraits of MM. Rene et Georges D. The Journal des Arts, giving an account of the exhibition at Rheims, summer, 1903, says: "The portraits here are not so numerous as one might expect, but they are too fine to be overlooked. Mlle. Jenny Fontaine has, for a long time, held a distinguished place as a portraitiste in our Salons, and two of her works are here: a portrait of a young girl and one of General Jeanningros."