[5][6] At the age of thirteen, he followed his brother Edward to begin studying drawing and modelling at the Royal Dublin Society school, where he took several first-class prizes.

[7] A number of works by Foley featured in the Great Exhibition of 1851, including the marble Ino and Bacchus and a bronze casting of a Youth at a Stream.

[2] Foley received three commissions for large equestrian sculptures of individuals who played prominent roles during the period of British rule in India.

[12] The statue, which showed Hardinge's horse trampling a broken Sikh artillery piece, was exhibited outside the Royal Academy in London before it was shipped to Kolkata where it was erected at Shaheed Minar near Government House in 1859.

[3] Foley depicted Outram in a dynamic pose, turning in his saddle to look backwards while pulling up his horse and he considered it his best equestrian work.

All the subsequent work on the commission including the full-size modelling, overseeing of the casting and shipping to India and the design of the plinth were completed by Thomas Brock.

[12] In 1864, Foley was chosen to sculpt one of the four large stone groups, each representing a continent, at the corners of George Gilbert Scott's Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens.

Foley's Asia, like the other three continental groups, featured a central large animal, in this case an elephant, attended by figures representing different cultures.

[2][14] In 1868, Foley was also asked to make the bronze statue of Prince Albert to be placed at the centre of the memorial, following the death of Carlo Marochetti, who had originally received the commission, but had struggled to produce an acceptable version.

However a series of illnesses slowed Foley's progress and by 1873 only the head of the statue had been cast in bronze while hundreds of other parts were still individual plaster figures.

Foley died of pleurisy in 1874, blamed by some on the extended periods he had spent working surrounded by the wet clay of the Asia model.

Foley died at his home "The Priory" in Hampstead, north London on 27 August 1874, and was buried in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral on 4 September.

[18] Foley's articled pupil and later studio assistant Francis John Williamson also became a successful sculptor in his own right, reputed to have been Queen Victoria's favourite.