Mary Redmond was an Irish

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 sculptress born in Nenagh

Nenagh

Nenagh is the county town of North Tipperary in Ireland. It is the administrative centre of North Tipperary and in 2011 it had a recorded population of 7,995. It is a civil parish in the historical barony of Ormond Lower...

, County Tipperary

County Tipperary

County Tipperary is a county of Ireland. It is located in the province of Munster and is named after the town of Tipperary. The area of the county does not have a single local authority; local government is split between two authorities. In North Tipperary, part of the Mid-West Region, local...

 in 1863, and then raised in Ardclough

Ardclough

Ardclough, officially Ardclogh , is a village and community in the parish of Kill County Kildare, Ireland, two miles off the N7 national primary road. Amongst its buildings today are a national school, a church, Ardclough GAA Club, and one shop "Buggys". Ardclough also contains the historic round...

, County Kildare

County Kildare

County Kildare is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Mid-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Kildare. Kildare County Council is the local authority for the county...

, where her father came to work in the limestone quarries.

At school in Ardclough she showed talent in modelling the soft clay from a sinkhole near her home into clay figures. Her most famous work, a statue of Father Mathew in Dublin's O’Connell Street was inaugurated in 1893 (Feb 8). According to Nora J Ryder’s article in Capuchin Annual (1932) the male model for the Father Mathew statue took the concept of getting plastered a little too far, was dismissed for drunkenness and was later convicted for vandalising her work.

Amongst her other works were a bust of Gladstone

William Ewart Gladstone

William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...

, modelled at his home

Hawarden Castle (18th century)

New Hawarden Castle, in Hawarden, Flintshire, Wales was the estate of former British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, which previously belonged to the family of his wife, Catherine Glynne. It was built in 1752...

; a bust of Dwyer Grey (of which thirty repeats were made) a presentation shield to Lord Wolseley

Garnet Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley

Field Marshal Garnet Joseph Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley, KP, GCB, OM, GCMG, VD, PC was an Anglo-Irish officer in the British Army. He served in Burma, the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, China, Canada, and widely throughout Africa—including his Ashanti campaign and the Nile Expedition...

 and a memorial bust of William Martin.

She moved to Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 and died in Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

on 16 January 1930.