O'Connor, Andrew (1874–1941), sculptor, was born 7 June 1874 at Worcester, Massachusetts, USA, the eldest of three sons and two daughters of Andrew O'Connor (1846–1924), of Lanarkshire, Scotland, a stonecutter who became a professional sculptor, and Marie Anne O'Connor (née McFadden) (d. 1888), of Co. Antrim. Educated in Worcester public schools, at the age of 14 he became apprenticed to his father, helping him to design monuments for cemeteries. He was employed (early 1890s) on sculptural work for the Chicago world's fair, being active in the studio of William Ordway Partridge, and assisting Daniel Chester French on the colossal statue of the ‘Republic’, a landmark of the 1893 Columbian exposition. Moving to London (1894–8), he worked on bas-reliefs in the studio of the painter John Singer Sargent, who used him as a model for his mural ‘Frieze of prophets’ for Boston public library. O'Connor's first independent work, ‘Sea dreams’, a relief of a head, was exhibited at the Royal Academy (1896). Returning to America (1898–1903), he became a studio assistant of French, through whom he received his first public commission, for the Vanderbilt memorial bronze doors for St Bartholomew's church, NY, a project completed in 1902 to wide critical acclaim; he also executed the tympanum and lateral friezes.
O'Connor married (c.1900) an artist's model named Nora, by whom he had a daughter. In 1902 he hired as studio model Jessie Phoebe Brown (c.1876–1974), from New Jersey, of Co. Down parentage; the following year he eloped with her to Paris, where they married and had four sons, the youngest of whom, Patrick O'Connor (qv), became an artist and gallery curator. Jessie continued for many years as his primary model, sitting for the heads of both female and male figures, O'Connor coarsening the features for the latter.
During his years in Paris (1903–14), O'Connor was influenced by the work of Auguste Rodin, whom he befriended. Among his pupils in Paris was the American sculptor and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt Whitney. He continued to fulfil numerous commissions for funerary and public monuments in the USA, an example of the former being the ‘Recuillement’ in Sleepy Hollow cemetery, near Tarrytown, NY. From 1906 he exhibited annually at the Paris salon, where he was the first foreigner to win a second-class medal, for his bronze statue of Gen. Henry Lawton (1906; Garfield Park, Indianapolis). Included in his only exhibition at the RHA (1907) was a bronze relief of the prophet Nehemiah adapted from a panel of the Vanderbilt doors; the relief was subsequently included in his one-man show at the Galerie Hébrard, Paris (1909).
In 1909 he won a competition open to sculptors of Irish descent to execute a monument to Commodore John Barry (qv), the Wexford-born ‘father of the American navy’, for Washington, DC; his design included a frieze depicting events in Irish history, flanked by a group of three nude Irish emigrants entitled ‘Exile from Ireland’, and another group representing the ‘Genius of Ireland’, which included a female figure of the ‘Motherland’. Probably owing to opposition from the Barry family to the depiction of their ancestor as a rough-and-ready sailor, the commission was not completed. O'Connor's marble statue of Gen. Lew Wallace (author of Ben Hur), a plaster of which was exhibited at the 1909 Paris salon, was placed by the state of Indiana in the national statuary hall in the US capitol, Washington, DC. Another marble, ‘Peace by justice’, was commissioned as a gift from the American nation to the Peace Palace in The Hague (1913).
O'Connor returned with his family to America on the outbreak of the first world war, and set up a studio in Paxton, MA. In 1918 his standing statue of the youthful Abraham Lincoln was placed outside the state capitol at Springfield, Illinois; he later presented a marble head of Lincoln to the American ambassador's residence, Phoenix Park, Dublin. His memorial in Chicago to President Theodore Roosevelt (1919) was commissioned as a tribute to Roosevelt's associations with the Boy Scouts of America; the design of four standing scouts, modelled on O'Connor's sons, was exhibited at the Art Alliance of Philadelphia (1920). O'Connor became an associate of the National Academy of Design, NY (1919). In the early 1920s he executed an equestrian statue of the Marquis de Lafayette for Washington Place, Baltimore.
Returning to Paris (mid 1920s), O'Connor became the first foreigner to win a gold medal at the salon des artistes (1928), for a marble sculpture of Tristan and Iseult, now held in the Brooklyn museum, NY. The French government made him a chevalier of the Legion d'honneur (1929). In 1926 he had exhibited a plaster group, ‘Monument aux morts de la grande guerre’, at the Paris salon; the sculpture was requested (1932) by the people of Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, as a memorial to Christ the King, O'Connor obligingly altering the interpretation of his iconography. Imposed on a ‘Tree of life’ are three figures of Christ, representing in turn ‘Desolation’, ‘Consolation’, and ‘Triumph’. Cast in bronze, throughout the second world war the statue remained hidden in Paris to avoid its being melted down for the valuable metal. Transported to Dún Laoghaire in 1949, because of clerical opposition to its unconventional iconography it was not at first erected, but for years lay on its side in a garden in Rochestown Avenue (resulting in an unusual pattern of weathering) until its eventual unveiling (1978) as ‘Triple cross’ in Haigh Terrace, where it stands in Moran Park. O'Connor's other chief work in Ireland is a bronze statue of Daniel O'Connell (qv) in the Bank of Ireland, College Green, Dublin; inspired by Rodin's famous ‘Balzac’, the work was executed at his studio in a converted stable at Leixlip castle, Co. Kildare (1931–2).
During the 1930s O'Connor lived and worked in London and Ireland, where he had residences at Glencullen house, Co. Wicklow, and 77 Merrion Sq., Dublin. He died at the latter address on 9 June 1941, and was buried in Glasnevin cemetery; his own bronze relief, ‘Le feu sacré’, marks the grave. A portrait painting, executed by his son Patrick (1940), is in Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, which also holds twenty-six sculptures presented by O'Connor late in his life, and posthumously by his family; the collection includes a marble self-portrait bust of 1940, a bronze of the ‘Lafayette’ cast by the gallery in 1984 from a reduced plaster model presented by the artist, and a bronze group entitled ‘The victim’, on view in Merrion Sq. park, from an uncommissioned and uncompleted war memorial conceived by O'Connor under the general title ‘Le débarquement’. The NGI has the ‘Desolation’ maquette for the ‘Triple cross’. A centenary exhibition of O'Connor's work was held in TCD in 1974. His widow died in Dublin in 1974.