Michael Collins (1890-1922) was an Irish revolutionary leader. He died during the Civil War that followed the Irish War of Independence.
Collins was one of the team that negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. He was chairman of the Provisional Government and, during the
Civil War, commander-in-chief of the government forces.

This portrait bust was commissioned by the Fine Gael political party marking the centenary of Collins’s birth in 1990. The sculptor Dick Joynt was an artist who had trained as a painter and turned to sculpture after joining the Dublin Art Foundry in 1972. He travelled extensively throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico during the 1960s before returning to Ireland and setting up ‘Craan Studios.’ Father of artist Rachel Joynt, he received numerous commissions for public sculptures throughout his career.