Rip van Winkle at Home

A very popular sculptor, Rogers created relatively inexpensive figurines for middle-class art collectors. He typically made statuettes of people engaged in everyday activities that evoked nostalgia for a simpler time. Many were intended as a means for viewers to come to terms with difficult subjects that arose during the Civil War years and the Reconstruction period. Sculptures like this one would have been displayed in 19th-century homes, functioning as a moral guide and demonstrating cultural literacy.

In this depiction of the main character from Washington Irving’s 1819 short story Rip Van Winkle, Rogers shows Rip just before he falls asleep for twenty years in the Catskill Mountains. Upon awakening, he finds that his hometown has been transformed by the American Revolution; his family and friends have all died or moved away. Created in the years just following the Civil War, this figure of a man watching children play would have resonated strongly with viewers who had experienced the loss of a loved one or the uncertainty of returning home after war.