Randolph Rogers
American, 1825-1892 (active Italy)
Ruth Gleaning, 1861
marble
34 3/4 x 16 in. (includes base)
SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by Mrs. Sterling Morton for gallery niche
1969.9
Photo of Rogers 1861
Ruth was an Old Testament heroine who left her birthplace and settled in Israel, uttering the words, "Whither thou goest, I will go."
RESEARCH PAPER
Randolph Rogers was a member of the second generation of American expatriate sculptors to live and work in Italy in the nineteenth century. Like many successful Americans of his time, he rose to prominence from a humble background.
Born in Waterloo, New York, in 1825, Rogers moved with his family to Ann Arbor, Michigan, at a young age. After a brief period of schooling, he was apprenticed in a bakery, and a few years later became a dry goods clerk. Eventually, he moved to New York City, where he continued in the same work until his employers discovered that he had a gift for modeling in clay, which he had been pursuing in his spare time. Financed by these farsighted businessmen, Rogers set off for Italy to study sculpture.
Study in Italy, leading to a career as an expatriate there, was typical for American sculptors of Rogers’ time. Much of the world’s great sculpture, from virtually every age, was to be found in Italy, while in America little other than plaster casts of the original works were available for study. Furthermore, in Italy the sculptor found a plentiful supply of suitable marble, along with a large work force of skilled marble carvers. As it was customary for sculptors of that time to execute their work in clay models, which were then realized in marble through reproduction by hired craftsmen, the Italian marble-carving industry was virtually indispensable to the success of sculptors such as Rogers.
In addition to these practical assets, the expatriate sculptor’s life in Italy had a romantic appeal heightened by the glamorous accounts of the “art life” by writers such as Hawthorne, Henry James, and the Brownings, who knew the colonies of expatriate artists in Florence and Rome.
The migration of American sculptors to Italy began when Horatio Greenough settled in Florence in 1825. This first generation of expatriate artists also included Hiram Powers and Thomas Crawford. Rogers was one of a younger group of artists who arrived in the late 1840s and 1850s, most of whom eventually gravitated to Rome. To this second generation likewise belonged William Wetmore Story, Edward Bartholomew, Paul Akers, Chauncey B. Ives, and Harriet Hosmer. The vogue for neoclassical sculpture as produced in Italy gradually subsided after the American Civil War, and by the 1890s the center of artistic life had finally shifted to Paris, where a new school of realist sculpture identified with Rodin had emerged.
Rogers arrived in Florence in 1848, to begin three years of study with the neoclassical sculptor, Lorenzo Bartolini. Following a move to Rome in 1851, Rogers soon produced two sculptures that were to secure his reputation in America: the “ideal” figures of Ruth Gleaning and Nydia, the Blind Girl of Pompeii. Both of these works were based on literary sources. The Nydia depicts the blind heroine of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), as she gropes her way to safety through the lava fields. Both sculptures were extremely popular, and dozens of replicas were ordered by wealthy travelers visiting Rome on the Grand Tour. The sale of these sculptures provided Rogers with a steady income and the means of repaying his original benefactors. As a result of the popularity of these sculptures, Rogers received a commission for a life-size figure of John Adams to stand in a chapel at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For this commission Rogers returned briefly to America in 1855, a successful sculptor at the age of thirty.
Rogers’ career was greatly assisted at this time by the friendship and patronage of Professor Henry Simmons Frieze (1817-1882), who was later to become President of the University of Michigan. Through his urging, a group at the University raised money to buy an early copy of the Nydia. Due to Frieze’s influence, Rogers bequeathed several examples of his work and his entire collection of casts to the University of Michigan.
Provenance
Previous history unknown: (according to a Letter of Aug. 23, 1980, from Spark to P. Knowles, purchased from “a dealer in the Boston area” by Spark): purchased from Spark by the SBMA for the PMC, 1969
Condition
Prior to its acquisition in 1969 by the SBMA the sculpture, “discolored by dirt and grime”, was cleaned, according to a letter of Oct. 11, 1968, from Spark to Goldthwaite H. Dorr III, then Director, SBMA
In the spring of 1977 the little finger of Ruth’s right hand was broken off at the joint of the hand and lost.
An examination by the LACMA Conservation Center in 1977 noted overall surface dirt and grease with several inclusions and pits in the marble. Treatment was completed Sept. 1977 by the LACMA Conservation Center. The sculpture was cleaned with water. Basic Hand Basic 1 by Shackley, and Wyandotte Detergent by Vermarco in the more soiled areas. The surface was spray coated with 872. 3% in toluene. The missing proper right little finger was modeled after the version owned by Mr. and Mrs. Julian Ganz, which is of a different scale. The finger was made out of hydrostone, PVA, no. 9 glass beads and powdered pigment in ochre and white. The finger was attached to the sculpture with PVA emulsion, then coated with liquitex polymer and acrylic paints, and given a final coat of 872. 8% in toluene.
Original research from the SBMA Docent Council file cabinet, n.d.
Prepared and edited for the website by Judy Seborg and Lori Mohr, fall 2012.
POSTSCRIPT
From RECENT ACQUISITION (Written 1969)
RUTH GLEANING, a marble by Randolph Rogers (1825 to 1892) is a pristine example of marble sculpture reflecting the spirit of Romantic Victorian eclecticism. Though Neo-classical in its material form and inspiration, the expression of the female figure gives evidence of a sentimental feeling, and the detailed rendering of grass, leaves and strands of hair reveals a strong sense of naturalism. The subject is a biblical anecdote from the Book of Ruth, showing Ruth, the faithful daughter of Naomi, caught in a moment of rapt surprise, probably at the sight of Boas, her Lord and future husband.
This sculpture, of which about twenty replicas were produced in Rome, was highly praised in its time and was instrumental as an example of his work, obtaining for Rogers a commission to design a set of bronze doors for the Capitol in Washington.
Rogers completed his RUTH before he was 30. One of the most gifted of the second generation of American expatriate sculptors, he lived all of his mature life in Rome, where the impressive remnants of classical antiquity and the artistic fashion for literary and moral imagery surely captivated him.
SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS
Part of a second generation of American sculptors to join the art colony in Rome during the mid-nineteenth century, Randolph Rogers achieved great success with this idealized sculpture of the Biblical figure Ruth. Depicted in a crouching position, Ruth gleans in the fields of Boaz, her future husband. The sheaf of wheat draped over her forearm and thigh of one of the numerous three-quarters reduced scale versions that the sculptor commissioned Italian artisans to produce. In its combination of literary sources with a subtle eroticism cloaked in the guise of Christian virtue, Rogers’ rendition of Ruth is typical of Victorian sculpture and the tastes of those who admired it.
- Ridley-Tree Reopening, 2021