Portrait of John Rogers, a Sculptor for the Common Man

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So American, this sculptor. Both a right brain and left-brain kind of guy. Working in the mid to late 19th … Read more So American, this sculptor. Both a right brain and left-brain kind of guy. Working in the mid to late 19th century, John Rogers was innovative, imaginative, and stylistically a realist. Additionally, he was determined to price his work low enough, basically at around $15, to be enjoyed in the country’s middle-class homes.
Roger’s great achievement was to tell stories in small groupings of plaster figures interacting on a shared base. His scenes of common Civil War soldiers gathered around a fire, people enjoying a game at home, as well as other domestic situations, were wildly popular. It was reported that Rogers' "Taking the Oath and Drawing Rations" was one of President Lincoln's favorites. Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, also praised Rogers' statue of his father in "The Council of War" as the best likeness.
The artist’s innovation was to develop a manufacturing process whereby workers could cast and finish his sculptures in a workshop in New York, “utilizing techniques like using metal armatures and flexible gum molds to reproduce his pieces.” Clearly the process worked; in a period of more that 30 years, Rogers created some 90 different figurine groups, yielding more than 100,000 copies reproduced. See less