John Rogers (October 30, 1829 – July 26, 1904) was an American sculptor who produced very popular, relatively inexpensive figurines in the latter 19th century.
He became famous for his small genre sculptures, popularly termed "Rogers Groups", which were mass-produced in cast plaster. A total of 80,000 copies of almost 80 Rogers Groups were sold across the United States and abroad.
At the height of their popularity, Rogers' figurines graced the parlors of homes in the United States and were found as far away as Chile and Australia. The English novelist Charles Reade furnished his home with all the Rogers figurines available to him, and in the Dakota Territory, Lt. Col. George Custer and his wife had one. Often selling for $15 apiece, the figurines were affordable to the middle class.
Instead of working in bronze and marble, he sculpted in more affordable plaster, painted the color of putty to hide dust. Rogers was inspired by popular novels, poems and prints as well as the scenes he saw around him.
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Life
John Rogers was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on October 30, 1829, to an unsuccessful but well-connected Boston merchant and attended Boston English High School. He gave early evidence of artistic interests and even as a young child, showed a taste and talent for drawing. However, his parents believed that an artist’s life was little better than a vagabond, and in 1845, at the age of sixteen, after what was considered a good education in the town schools, he was placed in a dry-goods store in Boston, with the intention of learning the business. However, Rogers felt certain he was not suited for this line of work, and in 1848 he began his career as a machinist and draftsman at the Amoskeag Locomotive Works in Manchester, New Hampshire, to learn the trade. During this period, Rogers devoted himself to his art with enthusiasm and was drawn to sculpture in particular. He began to model in clay in his leisure hours. Nevertheless, in 1856 Rogers sought work in Hannibal, Missouri as a mechanic with the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad. In 1858 he left that position to visit Europe to continue his formal education in sculpting. On his return in 1859 he went to Chicago, where he modeled, for a charity event, "The Checker Players," a group in clay, which attracted much attention. This event marked the beginning of an unusual career.
John Rogers died at his home in New Canaan, Connecticut, in 1904.
Recognition
John Rogers's statuettes celebrated the lives of ordinary people, urban and rural alike, in portraits that conveyed and endorsed shared American values. Through his Rogers Groups, he offered an unrivaled transcript of the manners, sports, amusements, social customs, domestic interests, costumes, and even modes of furnishing of the period. John Rogers made statues of Civil War soldiers, family groups, literary topics, theater scenes and heroic historical figures. His statues ranged from eight to forty-six inches tall.
Between 1860 and 1893 Rogers sculpted approximately 85 different, mostly patented groups of statuary. During that period, some 25 workman in his New York factory turned out thousands of plaster castings of his works. Some subjects he executed were only reproduced in a few copies. Of others, thousands were sold. Over Rogers' 30-year career, the artist sold over a million dollars of sculpture (about $30,000,000 in 2015, adjusted for inflation). It is estimated that a total of 80,000–100,000 plaster castings of his groups were produced during John Rogers’ lifetime. By the 1880s, it seemed that families who did not have a John Rogers Group were not conforming to the times. Even Abraham Lincoln had a John Rogers Group.
John Rogers statuary were moderately priced, averaging $14.00 a piece (about $425 in 2015 dollars). Rogers' sculptures became a nationwide vogue, and were seen in virtually every art and bookstore window. The appearance of a new John Rogers statue was a major event covered by reporters from the nation's newspapers.
John Rogers’ sculpture of "The Slave Auction," exhibited in New York in 1860, brought him to the notice of the general public. This was the forerunner of the well-known war series of Civil War statuettes which included, among others, the "Picket Guard" (1862), "One more Shot" (1864), "Union Refugees” (1864), "Taking the Oath and drawing Rations" (1866), "Wounded Scout" (1864), and "Council of War" (1868).
Rogers’ works on social subjects, most of which were sculpted following the Civil War, were also very popular. Among the most commonly found John Rogers Groups today are "Coming to the Parson" (1870), " We Boys" (1872), "The Favored Scholar" (1873), "Going for the Cows" (1873) and "Checkers up at the Farm" (1875).