1829 - 1904
In his youth, Rogers planned for a career as a mechanical engineer. During the 1850s he worked in a machine shop in Manchester, New Hampshire, and then in one in Hannibal, Missouri, until, in about 1857, he decided to devote his life to sculpture. He went to Paris in 1858, and then to Rome where he met many of the expatriate American neoclassic sculptors who worked there, among them William Wetmore Story and Harriet Hosmer. But Rogers was not inspired by the works of these men and women and, after returning to America in 1859 began producing the small genre groups for which he would become famous. When he showed three of these, Checker Players, The Auction, and The Village Schoolmaster, at the National Academy's annual exhibition of 1860, he received favorable critical and public notice and his career was made.
He continued to show at the Academy until the end of the century and, although genre groups were his most consistent representatives, he also sent portrait busts, allegorical works, and even, in 1874, several anatomical studies of man and horse. He presented the Academy with a collection of casts of the latter in 1876. The Academy's Autumn exhibition of 1893 featured a rare retrospective of Rogers's career, a disply which consisted of eighteen of his bronze groups, thirteen plasters, and one original clay model. He served the Academy as a member of the Council for the 1866-67 term and again from 1892 to 1894.
While his genre groups remained his most characteristic and popular works, Rogers's ability to model larger figures and animals is seen in the several public commissions he received for Civil War monuments, including an equestrian of General John F. Reynolds, 1882, for the city of Philadelphia. In fact, the Civil War provided Rogers with much material for his genre groups. Council of War, The Fugitive's Story, and The Picket Guard, are all examples of this. Following the war, he turned to more strictly literary sources in works such as Faust and Marguerite Leaving the Garden and Ichabod Crane. By the 1870s he was the best selling sculptor in America and remained so until his death.
Upon that event, the Academy remembered Rogers in its official record:
Broken health had for some years caused him to abandon work and to live in retirement--but his keen interest in the Academy's affairs long survived the physical ability to take an active part. Inclined from early years to express himself in drawing and modelling, it was only after delays and the overcoming of obstacles that he was able to devote himself to art. Few in our ranks have achieved a higher degree of popular success and fame than did John Rogers by his groups of genre subjects in bronze. Besides a great number of these, he executed a statue of Abraham Lincoln, an Equestrian Statue of General Reynolds, and a large group of Eliot preaching to the Indians.
He continued to show at the Academy until the end of the century and, although genre groups were his most consistent representatives, he also sent portrait busts, allegorical works, and even, in 1874, several anatomical studies of man and horse. He presented the Academy with a collection of casts of the latter in 1876. The Academy's Autumn exhibition of 1893 featured a rare retrospective of Rogers's career, a disply which consisted of eighteen of his bronze groups, thirteen plasters, and one original clay model. He served the Academy as a member of the Council for the 1866-67 term and again from 1892 to 1894.
While his genre groups remained his most characteristic and popular works, Rogers's ability to model larger figures and animals is seen in the several public commissions he received for Civil War monuments, including an equestrian of General John F. Reynolds, 1882, for the city of Philadelphia. In fact, the Civil War provided Rogers with much material for his genre groups. Council of War, The Fugitive's Story, and The Picket Guard, are all examples of this. Following the war, he turned to more strictly literary sources in works such as Faust and Marguerite Leaving the Garden and Ichabod Crane. By the 1870s he was the best selling sculptor in America and remained so until his death.
Upon that event, the Academy remembered Rogers in its official record:
Broken health had for some years caused him to abandon work and to live in retirement--but his keen interest in the Academy's affairs long survived the physical ability to take an active part. Inclined from early years to express himself in drawing and modelling, it was only after delays and the overcoming of obstacles that he was able to devote himself to art. Few in our ranks have achieved a higher degree of popular success and fame than did John Rogers by his groups of genre subjects in bronze. Besides a great number of these, he executed a statue of Abraham Lincoln, an Equestrian Statue of General Reynolds, and a large group of Eliot preaching to the Indians.
