Randolph Rogers was born on 6 July 1825. He was an American sculptor, and sculptor of the "Columbus doors" of the Capitol at Washington. Most of his works are in the neo-classic style.
Background
Randolph Rogers was born on 6 July 1825 at Waterloo, New York, the son of John and Sara (McCarthy) Rogers. The father was a carpenter from the neighborhood of Syracuse, who in successive stages was moving west. He eventually settled in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where the future sculptor lived from his eighth to his eighteenth year.
Education
The period between Rogers' eighth and eighteenth years at Ann Arbor, Michigan, where the future sculptor lived at this time with his parents, was marked by some education in the common schools and by some clerical experience in a general store.
From 1848 to 1851 he worked at the Academy of St. Mark in Florence under Lorenzo Bartolini, celebrated as a neo-classicist of ability.
Career
Starting at his eighteen and for the next five years he worked in the wholesale dry-goods store of John Stewart in New York City. Long an amateur in the various artistic media, he had been paid ten dollars for a wood engraving of a log cabin and flags by an Ann Arbor paper, and had thereby supplied the party emblem for Harrison's campaign in 1840; now he attracted the attention of his employers by his modeling of the children of one of them, Lycurgus Edgerton, and by a bust of Lord Byron. As a result Stewart and Edgerton lent their clerk the funds for a period of study in Italy. From 1848 to 1851 he worked at the Academy of St. Mark in Florence under Lorenzo Bartolini, celebrated as a neo-classicist of ability.
With the proceeds of the sale of an ideal bust called "Night" and a kneeling figure, "Ruth, " made at the close of the period, he repaid his benefactors their loans to him and for the following two years was established in a studio of his own in Rome, modeling his most popular figure, "Nydia, " Bulwer-Lytton's blind girl of Pompeii, prior to his return to America in 1853.
The commission for a statue of John Adams for Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, and for the bronze doors to face the corridor leading from Statuary Hall to the new House wing of the Capitol at Washington fell to his lot at this time. In 1855 he was again in his studio in Rome, where he centered his activities for the rest of his life, save for occasional professional trips to America.
In 1861 the "Isaac" was modeled, and the Washington Monument in Richmond, left incomplete by Thomas Crawford, was finished with two historical figures, and six allegorical figures in place of the eagles originally planned.
The Colt funereal monument in Hartford, Connecticut, "The Angel of the Resurrection, " followed in 1862. During the winter of 1863, which he passed in Cincinnati, he received the commission for the first of his military monuments, "The Soldier of the Line. "
An amazing number of orders for portrait busts, nineteen in the winter of 1866 alone, as well as for medallions, bas-reliefs, and other private commissions, kept him busy until his great opportunity came in 1867 with the order for colossal soldiers' and sailors' monuments for Providence and for Detroit.
These were masses of granite, fifty feet in height, decorated with bronze figures and reliefs. Toward the close of his active career came the soldiers' monument at Worcester, Massachussets, the seated Lincoln in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, and the Seward in Madison Square, New York City. His last ideal works were the "Lost Pleiad, " which has vied in popularity with the "Nydia" of his early days, the "Genius of Connecticut" for the state capitol at Hartford, and the "Last Arrow, " an equestrian Indian group.
After 1882 the sculptor had to give up his work because of paralysis.
Between 1886 and 1888 he forwarded most of the casts representing his life work to the Museum of Art and Architecture of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. In 1873 he was chosen professor of sculpture at the Academy of St. Luke in Rome, and a councilor of the Academy in 1875. He died in Rome, January 15, 1892, and, having become a member of the Roman Catholic Church in his later years, was buried with his wife in San Lorenzo Cemetery, the grave marked by his finest funereal monument, representing a freed soul rising with lightness, dignity, and grace.
His "Ruth" and "Nydia" attracted much attention at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, and as recently as 1931 the exhibition of a bust of his wife in the art museum of Grand Rapids occasioned appreciative comment in the local press.
The University of Michigan is the center for any present-day study of Rogers' work.
The set of original casts there is nearly complete, although the models of the "Columbus doors" are duplicates.
Rogers' style is that of the neo-classic period, his subject matter is narrative in character, his modeling approaches realism. Of his popular successes, the "Nydia" is at the Chicago Art Institute, the "Lost Pleiad" at the art museum in San Francisco, and the "Ruth" in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
The doors at Washington are now placed at the main entrance of the rotunda, and wear well as narrative rather than as decorative or creative art.
They follow in general the designs Ghiberti used for his second pair of doors on the Baptistry at Florence.
With borders marked by mouldings, trophies, and niches, eight panels and a culminating lunette tell the story of Columbus' adventures clearly and dramatically. With borders marked by mouldings, trophies, and niches, eight panels and a culminating lunette tell the story of Columbus' adventures clearly and dramatically.
But perhaps Rogers at his best is represented by the "Michigan, " a heroic figure on the top of the Detroit monument, or by the heroic Negro figure of "Emancipation" on the same monument.
Religion
Having become a member of the Roman Catholic Church in his later years, Rogers was buried with his wife in San Lorenzo Cemetery, the grave marked by his finest funereal monument, representing a freed soul rising with lightness, dignity, and grace.
Personality
Randolph Rogers is described as having been a large, powerful man of great vigor and of unsparing industry. He was of distinguished appearance, with the massive forehead, the strong features, and the long beard of the patriarch--an indispensable member of the American colony in Rome. He has been depicted as a convivial friend and amateur actor, the companion of Greenough and Crawford, entertaining in his studio Hawthorne one day and royalty the next, going his whole-souled, generous way in a somewhat heroic fashion.
Connections
A short visit to America in the fall of 1857 was marked by his marriage to Rosa Gibson of Richmond, Virginia, who became the mother of his nine children.