Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-09-17
The Rogers Groups.

| FROM the Beacon.
John Rogers, the Salem-born sculptor,
| who received his education in Boston-and
! then made Rogers groups-has just died
| at an advanced age. The fad in sculpture
| with which his name is associated has long
been dead. There are probably few homes
| In this country today where the brownish
| clay products of this mans hands are still
| given parlor places Yet in its day the
Rogers group was household necessity.
| Not to have one of those civil war pieces
on table in ones best room was indeed
paramount, for years ago, to a lack of
proper patriotism. That these little brown
| sculptures played, for all their ugliness, a
considerable part in the evolution of Amer
lean artistic instinct seems now to be gen
orally admitted. James Jackson Jarves
even went so far as to say in his Art
Idea that the things possessed real ele-
ments of greatness. I'VE now come" he
| wrote, Ito high order of ability; indeed.
we may call it genius in it's peculiar prov
ince, as original as it Is varied, and
graphic, pure in sentiment, clever in execu-
ton and thoroughly American in the best
sense of the word in everything.
We know of no sculptor like John Rogers
of New York, in the old world. and he
stands alone in his chosen field, heretofore
in all ages appropriated by painting, a
genuine production of our soil, enlivening
ing the affections by his lovely, well-bal-
anced groups" This as q contem-
porary points out, is rather a revelation
of what Jarves was critic than of
what Rogers was as a sculptor. But as
showing what people who were supposed
to know thought of the Rogers group as
late as 1870 the passage is not without
value. The truth of the thing is, of course,
that in matters of sculpture, as In every
thing else, we have progressed during these
thirty years. The immense walnut bed
stead, without which no bride might set
up housekeeping, has passed. as well as the
Rogers group The Overpowerfng book
case that was another feature of every
well-to-do establishment in those early
seventies has also passed. In furnishings,
as in frocks, fashions change. Where we
Of today make mistake Is in thinking
that we have now reached the topnotch Of
taste George AIDE has hit off in one of
his best fables the household where burlap
has perforce taken the place of wall paper
and where nothing not approved as "hfgh
art' is admitted. Are we not all acquaint-
ed with such homes? Just at this moment
mission furniture Is highly regarded in
arts and crafts circles Whereupon,
whether 1t fits in with the room or not,
Mrs. Binks must have deep, square low
backed chairs. Mr.. Binks may yearn in
speech as well as in thought for the COM
Portable easy chair of his bridegroom days,
but 1t will be in vain. The mission furni-
ture Is correct; that settles the matter.
But the mission furniture phase will pass,
as did the Japanese screen phase and the
antique oak phase and the black walnut
phase And the one is. perhaps, no more
''artistic' or "inartistic'' than the others.
The sensible people, one must conclude, are
those who buy for their homes only such
furniture as seems to them comfortable,
and such gewgaws as seem to them beauti-
out from the attic and quote James jack
son Jarves thereon to your friends.