At the U.S. Capitol, Bailly designed the Monumental Clock for the United States House of Representatives Chamber (1858) and carved its wooden case.
[3] One of his most accomplished works is the marble sculpture group Paradise Lost (1863–68), depicting Adam and Eve ruminating on their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Bailly carved a number of funerary memorials, including that of the artist William Emlen Cresson (1869), at Laurel Hill Cemetery, which showed the young painter holding his brush and palette (now missing).
[4] He exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts beginning in 1851, was elected an Academician by PAFA in 1860, and taught there during the American Civil War.
[5] Among his students were Howard Roberts, John J. Boyle, and Alexander Milne Calder (whose submission for the colossal statue of William Penn atop Philadelphia City Hall was selected over Bailly's).
He exhibited several works at the 1876 Centennial Exposition, including the plaster model for an equestrian statue of Venezuela's president, Antonio Guzmán Blanco.
Philadelphia newspaper The Times published an obituary: Joseph A. Bailly, the well-known sculptor, died on Friday at his residence, at the corner of Hutton and Preston streets.