Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/O'Doherty, William James
O'DOHERTY, WILLIAM JAMES (1835–1868), sculptor, was born in Dublin in 1835. He studied in the government school of design attached to the Royal Dublin Society, with the intention of becoming a painter, but afterwards, by the advice of Constantine Panormo, A.R.H.A., who was then one of the assistant masters in that institution, he turned his attention to modelling, and within a year gained the prize for his model of ‘The Boy and the Bird.’ On the death of Panormo in 1852 he entered the studio of Joseph R. Kirke, R.H.A., and worked there until 1854, when, at the suggestion of John Edward Jones [q. v.] the sculptor, he came to London. His first appearance at the Royal Academy was in 1857, when he exhibited, under the name of Dogherty, a model in plaster of ‘Gondoline,’ a subject taken from Kirke White's poems, and afterwards executed in marble for Mr. R.C.L. Bevan the banker. In 1860 he sent the model of the marble statue of ‘Erin,’ executed for the Marquis of Downshire. It was engraved by T. W. Knight for the ‘Art Journal’ of 1861. Both in 1860 and 1861, when he sent to the British Institution ‘One of the Surrey Volunteers,’ his works appeared under the name of Doherty; but in 1862 he appears to have adopted that of O'Doherty. His subsequent works included ‘Alethe,’ a marble statuette executed for Mr. Bevan, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1862, and some portrait busts exhibited in 1863 and 1864. About three years before his death he went to Rome to pursue his studies and to execute a commission, the subject of which was to be ‘The Martyr.’ His early death in February 1868, in the hospital of La Charité in Berlin, while on a visit to that city, ended a brief career of much promise.
[Art Journal, 1861 p. 252, 1868 p. 73; Exhibition Catalogues of the Royal Academy and British Institution (Living Artists), 1857–1864.]