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Referred to as “The People’s Sculptor,” John Rogers is best known for his genre groups depicting scenes from popular stage plays, operas, and other familiar subject matter. With a team of craftsmen, Rogers produced plaster reproductions from bronze master molds, making over 80,000 replicas of roughly ninety groups from 1859 to 1894. By affordably pricing his sculptures and selling them through a mail-order catalogue, Roger successfully cultivated a middle-class audience around the country.
One of Rogers’s most successful works, Is It So Nominated in the Bond captures the scene from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice in which the moneylender, Shylock, threatens to take a pound of Antonio’s flesh as punishment for a delinquent loan. When Antonio’s friend Portia suggests that a surgeon extract the flesh, Shylock retorts, “Is it so nominated in the bond?” — in other words, was that the agreement? Portia responds, “It is not so express’d; but what of that? ‘Twere good you do so much for charity.”
VM, 2014
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+1955.177 |
