Albert George Power, Irish sculptor in the academic realist style, is born at 8 Barrack Street (now Benburb Street) in Dublin on November 16, 1881. He is particularly known for his iconic statue of the Irish writer Pádraic Ó Conaire.

Power is born to Henry Power, a watchmaker, and Mary (née Atkins), an embroideress. He has one older brother, and one younger sister. He attends a Christian Brothers national school in North Brunswick Street. As a child he plays in local clay brickyards and sculpts busts of his friends. After finishing his primary school education, he trains with a firm of sculptors run by Edward Smyth. In 1884, he enrolls as an evening pupil at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA), later attending as a full-time student from 1906 to 1911. During his time at the DMSA he is taught and strongly influenced by John Hughes, Oliver Sheppard and William Orpen. He wins a number of prizes during his time at the DMSA, including medals, three scholarships, book prizes, and the national gold medal for the best modeling of a nude figure, in Ireland, Scotland, and the Channel Islands in 1911.

Power marries Agnes Kelly in 1903. The couple has ten children, four daughters and six sons, including May and James who also become sculptors.

Power establishes his own stone-carving business in 1912 from his new home at 18 Geraldine Street, Phibsborough, Dublin. As the firm grows, it moves to premises nearby at 15 Berkeley Street from 1930. He executes a wide range of works, including monuments and architectural features in bronze, marble, and stone. Among his notable works are the figure of “Science” designed by Sheppard from the façade of the new Royal College of Science for Ireland (later Government Buildings) on Merrion Street, Dublin, carved motifs and sphinxes for the Gresham Hotel, O’Connell Street, and four statues on the dome of Christ the King church, Carndonagh, County Donegal.

Power is considered the leading Irish sculptor of the 1920s and 1930s. He is a nationalist and promotes the use of Irish materials such as limestone from Durrow and Connemara marble. He is noted for his academic realist style. He exhibits regularly with the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1906, becoming an associate member in 1911, and a full member in 1919. Among those he models sculptures for are James Stephens (1913), W. B. Yeats (1918), and Lord Dunsany (1920). Among his patrons are Oliver St. John Gogarty, and through Gogarty he is commissioned to model a number of prominent Irish nationalists. Gogarty asks him to carve a portrait of Terence MacSwiney in 1920, while MacSwiney is on hunger strike in HM Prison Brixton, London. Smuggled into the prison to do a thumbnail sketch, Power then carves a portrait in the form of a life mask.

On Gogarty’s recommendation, Power is commissioned by the Irish Free State government to create portraits of a number of leading politicians including Arthur Griffith (1922), Michael Collins (1936), and Austin Stack (1939). He is also privately commissioned to execute a portrait of Éamon de Valera in 1944. Among his monumental works are sculptures of Tom Kettle (1919) at St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, Christ the King in Gort, County Galway, (1933), Pádraic Ó Conaire (1935) at Eyre Square, Galway, and W. B. Yeats (1939) at Sandymount Green, Dublin. He is one of the artists invited to submit designs for the new coinage of the Irish Free State in 1928.

Power dies in Dublin on July 10, 1945, following complications from a double hernia. His is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.