About John Rogers
John Rogers (1829-1904) created groups of statuary from 1859 to 1892 on the subjects of everyday life, the theater, Shakespeare, the Civil War and horses. His statuary is often referred to as "groups" of which these subjects consist because a particular group will most always have two or more figures in the piece. Each of the above banner images picture an "example" of a group that is representative of each of these five subjects. At a time when it was in vogue to have parlor statuary in one’s Victorian home, Rogers provided appealing high quality durable plaster statuary which was well within the financial reach of many for whom marble or bronze statuary was not.
John Rogers was born and raised in the Boston, MA area. Although becoming a master mechanic and working in Manchester, NH, Rogers always had exhibited a love for drawing, modeling, and painting. He eventually parlayed this proclivity and hobby into a full-time artistic career that he launched after a year of study abroad in Italy and France. His style is best characterized as "realism". It would not be a "stretch" at all to think of Norman Rockwell as the mid-twentieth century's John Rogers. What Rockwell did on canvas, John Rogers did in "mud".
Rogers proved to be quite successful both as an artist and as a businessman promoting his work. Once up and running his studio managed, on average, the introduction of two new groups a year with a work force of as many as ten employees. He may have produced as many as 100,000 examples of his groups during his studio's operation although this is not certain since his production records were not kept in particularly good order. Nevertheless, John Rogers, during the last half of the nineteenth century was recognized as the preeminent popular artist of his time.
John Rogers was born and raised in the Boston, MA area. Although becoming a master mechanic and working in Manchester, NH, Rogers always had exhibited a love for drawing, modeling, and painting. He eventually parlayed this proclivity and hobby into a full-time artistic career that he launched after a year of study abroad in Italy and France. His style is best characterized as "realism". It would not be a "stretch" at all to think of Norman Rockwell as the mid-twentieth century's John Rogers. What Rockwell did on canvas, John Rogers did in "mud".
Rogers proved to be quite successful both as an artist and as a businessman promoting his work. Once up and running his studio managed, on average, the introduction of two new groups a year with a work force of as many as ten employees. He may have produced as many as 100,000 examples of his groups during his studio's operation although this is not certain since his production records were not kept in particularly good order. Nevertheless, John Rogers, during the last half of the nineteenth century was recognized as the preeminent popular artist of his time.