SCULPTORS ROGERS AND RIMMER by Joan K. Yanni

SCULPTORS ROGERS AND RIMMER

by Joan K. Yanni

(Editor's Note: Information on William Rimmer and Randolph Rogers was researched by docent Annette Satloff. Since the sculptures described are all in the same area of the Gallery, I have condensed the material for use on a tour. Note that accession numbers ending in "L" are loans, not part of the MAG collection.)

Did you realize that both Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii (93.24) and The Last Shot (11.82L) were created by the same sculptor?

RANDOLPH ROGERS was born in Waterloo, NY, in 1825, and as a young man traveled to Italy for instruction in the techniques of sculpture. In 1948 he moved to Florence to study with noted sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini. Thereafter he lived most of his life in Rome, returning to America only periodically.  Most of his commissions came from Americans visiting him in his Italian studio.

Rogers modeled all of his sculptures first in clay, then cast them in plaster.  After these models were made, the works were cut from marble by stonecutters or cast in bronze in the artist's studio. His works reflect his classical training.

Rogers modeled Nydia, his most famous sculpture, when he was thirty. About one hundred replicas of the sculpture exist. His source was Edward Bulwer-Lytton's popular novel The Last Days of Pompeii, written in 1832-33 about the eruption of Vesuvius. Studying Nydia's face—her closed eyes, her hand cupped to her ear, and her staff—tour groups can guess that she is blind. In the novel, she guides two companions to the seashore to escape, avoiding the masses of ruin in her path, only to lose track of her friends.

Nydia was a reflection of Victorian taste, a pathetic figure tugging at heartstrings—symbolizing the virtues of feminine sacrifice and endurance. The fallen capital at her feet is the only indication of doomed Pompeii.

The Last Shot (11.87L), (called The Last Arrow in some versions) was the final piece Rogers worked on. Ours, loaned by the Metropolitan Museum, was cast in 1880. The sculpture was originally made with an arrow set into the bowstring.  Our arrow is lost, but two other cast pieces, with the arrow, survive. Beneath the horse lies a wounded Indian in a pose recalling the classical sculpture The Dying Gaul.  Rogers' facility with bronze is apparent in his depiction of movement, his gestural details and facial expressions.  The terror expressed by the horse, his rearing motion, flailing tail and tilted head, rank this work among the finest American animal sculptures. Rogers died in 1892. 

William Rimmer (1816-1879) was one of the most remarkable figures in American art—a powerful draughtsman, a learned anatomist, a great teacher, a highly imaginative painter, and a gifted sculptor. Yet his work is seldom seen and his name little known.  Self-taught, he was more learned in the anatomy of men and animals than any American until Eakins.

Rimmer believed that he was the son of a man who, by rights, was King of France.  He thought his father, Thomas Rimmer, was the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. This was the key to his eccentricity, arrogance, and even his superior education. Rimmer was entirely self-taught as a physician, a situation legal in the early 19th century. Around 1855, after practicing for some ten years, Rimmer was issued a formal license by the Suffolk Medical Society and was hereafter known as Dr. Rimmer.  He became increasingly skillful in manipulating the human body in sculpture, and loved to show it at the point of collapse or the peak of extreme tension.

The Falling Gladiator was begun in February, 1861, and finished in June that same year. Rimmer spent some 200 hours on the figure, working in an unheated basement in East Milton, MA, and using only his own body as a model. He piled up raw clay, hacking into it and working from the outside in, as in marble.  After the clay form was made, the piece was cast in plaster. The Gladiator remained in this form until 1906, when Daniel Chester French, a student and friend, organized a committee to have two copies cast in bronze.

The figure of the nude, helmeted athlete is shown as having received a staggering blow to the head, causing one arm to be thrown up, the other bent behind, the hand clasping a shattered blade. The right side of the body strains upward, countered by the compressed and falling left. It is Rimmer's masterpiece; he never carved anything before or after on the same scale.  Following the completion of The Falling Gladiator, Rimmer began to lecture at Lowell Institute in Boston.  His was the first art instruction of his time based on the human figure.

In addition to The Falling Gladiator, only two of Rimmer's sculptures have been cast in bronze: Dying Centaur (1871 plaster, 1907 bronze) and Fighting Lions (1871 plaster, 1907 bronze.) His monument to Alexander Hamilton, cut out of a solid block of granite, is currently located on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston.

Sources: Curatorial notes from MAG and Metropolitan Museum of Art; Rogers, Millard F. Jr.: Randolph Rogers, American Sculptor in Rome; Kirstein, Lincoln: William Rimmer, 1816-1879.