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John Rogers

American, 1829 - 1904

Remarks: Text panel for Rotunda 11/28/17 to 1/16/18: John Rogers (1829 – 1904) John Rogers was a household name in late nineteenth-century America. He was as successful a businessman as he was an accomplished sculptor. His forte was narrative ensembles, executed in plaster, scaled for the domestic setting, and priced for the middle-class market. At its height, his workshop comprised sixty employees. While Rogers concentrated on making the initial plaster model, craftsmen made the molds, refined and finished the plaster casts, painted them in a monochrome clay-colored coating, and packed them for shipment across the country. Advertised in newspapers and magazines, his pieces were sold in traditional small stores as well as in department stores—a new type of emporium established in big cities like Boston, Chicago, and New York by Jordan Marsh, Marshall Field, and Rowland Macy, respectively. Rogers first came to national prominence with moralizing sculptures against slavery and Civil War vignettes. In the 1870s, however, in response to a change in the national mood, Rogers created sentimental family narratives. Two of his most popular are exhibited here. Critics praised Rogers’ storytelling abilities. The figures, captured in the midst of a moment, are fully engaged with one other. The viewer could “hear” them “speak” to one another. Indeed, a frequent theatergoer, Rogers often depicted scenes from popular plays, novels, and songs. He inscribed the title on the base, often incorporating a well-known line. In the later nineteenth-century, the center of the home moved from the kitchen hearth to the parlor. This room, well appointed with comfortable furnishings and instructional imagery, including Rogers sculptures, came to epitomize the moral rectitude and educational and cultural aspirations of the American family. John Rogers (1829 – 1904) American Playing the Doctor, 1872 Plaster Donated by Charles R. Wood (1992.4.51) Rogers used his own children as models. Two-year-old Charlie, his feet in a bucket of hot water, is unwell. Little Katie, swathed in her mother’s Victorian dress, wraps him in a large blanket. Big brother Johnny, who has donned his father’s coat and spectacles—John Rogers was plagued by poor eyesight throughout his life—prepares to administer a cure of some sort from a bottle in his hand. Other tinctures are stuffed into the pocket of his overcoat. Rogers advertised this sculpture for doctors’ offices as well as for the home.   John Rogers (1829 – 1904) American School Days, 1877 Plaster Donated by Charles R. Wood (1992.4.60) Two children, either going to or coming from school—the little girl holds a schoolbook, her brother carries a satchel over his shoulder—are enraptured by the dancing figures on the organ-grinder’s organ. The little girl has not noticed that the mischievous monkey has stolen her brother’s hat. Rogers captivated his viewers’ attention with myriad details, as in the folds and pleats of clothing and the ornamental reliefs on the organ case. To retain the definition of these details, even as he manufactured thousands of plaster copies, Rogers cast his clay originals in bronze, which he then used as the master model for his commercial molds.