Using Yankee ingenuity, John Rogers, Jr., mass-produced plaster statuettes inexpensively and sold them to the general public. After attending college, Rogers worked for nine years as a machinist and draftsman in New England and a master railroad mechanic in Missouri. Although he had modeled clay figures for his own pleasure since 1849, he did not consider becoming a professional sculptor until he lost his job as a result of the Panic of 1857. In 1858 he traveled to Paris, where he modeled anatomical figures under the supervision of Antoine-Laurent Dantan (1798-1878), then to Rome, where he studied sculpture briefly with the English neoclassicist Benjamin Spence (1822-1866). Rogers returned home within the year and after the enthusiastic reception of his Checker Players, 1860, at a Chicago bazaar, decided to move to New York. There The Slave Auction, 1860, and later other Civil War subjects aroused much attention and initiated his long and successful career. The popularity of Union Refugees in 1863 resulted in his election to the National Academy of Design.
Between 1859 and 1893, when he gave up art due to ill health, Rogers sold some eighty thousand painted plaster reproductions, using commercial advertising to make his wares known to the general public. Rogers emphasized the narrative aspect of his figure groupings and was a master of pathos and humor, employing expressive gestures and theatrical poses to convey sentiment. The realistic Rogers Groups, as they were called, depict American historical themes, American and English literary and theatrical illustrations, and American contemporary scenes. The last were his most popular and can be considered the three-dimensional equivalent of Currier and Ives prints. Rogers also created a largescale equestrian bronze monument of General John Reynolds for Philadelphia City Hall, 1884, and a heroic-size seated Abraham Lincoln for Manchester, New Hampshire, 1892.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
William 0. Partridge, "John Rogers: The People’s Sculptor," New England Magazine n.s. 13 (February 1896): 705-21 § Dorothy C. Barck, "Rogers Groups in the Museum of the New-York Historical Society," New-York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin 16 (October 1932): 67-86, with list of works in the society’s Rogers collection § Mr. and Mrs. Chetwood Smith, Rogers Groups: Thought and Wrought by John Rogers (Boston: Goodspeed, 1934), with catalogue of published and unpublished works, family genealogy § David H. Wallace, John Rogers: The People’s Sculptor (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1967), with catalogue raisonné, appendixes concerning the production of the plaster groupings from the initial design to the packing of the plaster casts § Paul Bleier and Meta Bleier, John Rogers’ Groups of Statuary: A Pictorial and Annotated Guide for the Collector (North Woodmere, N.Y.: Privately printed, 1971), with extensive discussion of Rogers’s production and sales methods, annotated list of works.
