Nast, a native of Landau, Germany, was brought to America as a child by his parents. He studied art briefly at the National Academy of Design, and in 1855 joined the staff of "Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper." In 1862 he took a job as illustrator and cartoonist with "Harper's Weekly" where his drawings for the next quarter century brought him great recognition. In 1860 Nast sailed to Italy to join Giuseppe Garibaldi in his struggle for freedom and unity, at which time this bust was made.

After his successful Civil War subject Country Postoffice: News from the Army (1929.105, 1936.644), showing a young woman anxious to read a letter being carefully examined by the local postmaster, Rogers was stumped for ideas for another group to add to his offerings for Christmas 1863. In September he wrote almost apologetically to his mother, "I am now at work on a single figure, which does not amount to much, till I can think of something more satisfactory." Mail Day went on sale in time for the holidays. Rogers employed an unusual single-figure format to depict a soldier seated with a writing board on his lap. With pen in one hand and inkpot in the other, he scratches his chin and raises his eyes to the sky, waiting for inspiration. In the artist's words, "It is the day for the mail to close, and a soldier is puzzling his brains so as to complete his letter in time." The subject is at least somewhat autobiographical; Rogers often confessed that he had difficulty thinking of what to write about in his letters home, and the soldier's perplexity mirrored Rogers' own as he searched for his next subject. The artist seemed concerned that the single figure would not have enough presence to hold its own in the company of his larger and more complex subjects; the writing board bisects the composition and adds an element of horizontality, and the soldier's overcoat flows off his shoulders and away from his body, adding further width. In spite of Rogers' concerns, the New York Times art critic Charles de Kay called Mail Day the best of Rogers' Civil War groups, citing its humor, strong composition, and good modeling. Depicting the soldier whose letter was so eagerly awaited, Mail Day was intended as a companion to Country Postoffice: News from the Army (1929.105, 1936.644). However, the two were rarely mentioned together in contemporary accounts. Perhaps this was because the two groups bore almost no visual relation to one another. Country Postoffice is four inches taller and, with its two figures and many accessories, is far more complex than the lone soldier with little more than his writing board and his thoughts. Though sales records have not survived, Mail Day is now rarer than Country Postoffice, suggesting that not many copies were sold because it was not very popular. When Rogers later attempted pairs or series of sculptures, he established strong visual and narrative links among them, as he did in The Photographer (1928.27) and The Sitter (1928.26), and his series of three episodes from the story of Rip Van Winkle (1936.651-.653).

This work from 1862 was adapted from a sculpture of the same name that Rogers modeled in Chicago in 1859 (location unknown). He titled the earlier sculpture Country Courtship and included in it a horse and a dog. By the time Rogers created this later version, the nation was engulfed in the Civil War, and he carefully tailored his composition to suit the new realities. Rogers eliminated the dog and horse and focused on the interaction between the soldier and the young woman. The soldier stands, cup in hand, with one foot casually planted on the trough, and one hand dangling from the pump. He leans in as he speaks to a simply dressed girl with a bucket who has come to draw water. She declines to approach the pump and draws away but inclines her head to indicate her interest. The two engage in a delicate dance of flirtation but maintain their propriety. The girl's modest dress and shy demeanor guarantee her virtue, and the inquisitive soldier is in full uniform: his hat is on, his cloak is buttoned up to his neck, and he is laden with his pack and equipment, including a cartridge box with a "U.S." insignia, reminding the viewer of his valiant service to the Union. Rogers' tableau depicts a moment of contact, and contemporary viewers would have wondered what preceded it-and what came afterward. As Rogers' only Civil War group showing interaction between a civilian and a soldier on active duty, The Town Pump struck a chord with the many people who had seen a young man off to war. Rogers' sales catalogue described the scene: "A soldier who has stopped at the town-pump for a drink, meets a girl who comes with her pail for water, and has a talk and flirtation with her." Rogers' early version began as a scene of courtship, suggesting the beginning of a relation leading to marriage, but his new group showed merely a lighthearted chat. Though Rogers kept the mood bright, his viewers knew that any such soldier would soon move on, perhaps to face battle and death. Most critics understood the nature of the scene. One writer described the "mischievous young private" and the "village coquette" and assured readers, "It is no Isaac and Rebecca at the well affair, but an out and out flirtation" (referring to the biblical story of Isaac meeting his future wife). But other writers interpreted the group differently. The writer for the Boston Evening Transcript composed a poem describing the scene as a declaration of fidelity from a departing lover. More than twenty years later such interpretations persisted. The subject quickly became part of the complex of personal and collective memory related to the war, as can be seen in Johannes Oertel's Visiting Grandma (N-YHS, 1970.75). Painted just a few years later, in 1865, it shows two young children in the parlor with their grandmother, and on a shelf stands The Town Pump. The young couple in the sculpture functions almost as the parents who fill the generational void between the children and the elderly matron. Rogers exhibited The Town Pump at the National Academy of Design in 1862 to critical acclaim; it attracted far more attention than his other contribution, Air Castles, a large-scale marble in the neoclassical tradition that he had labored on for more than a year. By comparison, he had spent just a few weeks modeling The Town Pump. During the early 1860s Rogers struggled to choose between the reigning neoclassical tradition of ideal subjects rendered in marble and his inclination toward small plaster groups of subjects from American life. The enthusiastic response to The Town Pump affirmed his course toward realism.

In the 1860s Rogers' works addressed key social issues, and with Uncle Ned's School he took on the difficult question of freed slaves education and their future opportunities as new United States citizens. In the years after the Civil War, former slaves organized many new schools that ranged from brand-new structures to improvised classrooms in cellars or old sheds. Here Rogers showed one such informal school in his only group made up entirely of African Americans. The elderly cobbler Uncle Ned pauses in his work to assist one of his students with a question about the book that she points out to him as he leans on a ramshackle cabinet. At his feet a young boy with a tattered book open on his lap mischievously tickles the cobbler's foot with a feather. Though the girl is respectably dressed, the man and boy wear ragged, patched clothing, and all are barefoot. In depicting a cobbler and his charges without shoes of their own, Rogers pointed out their continued poverty, emphasizing the need for education to better their situation. Rogers knew that his audience would be familiar with the character of Uncle Ned from the popular 1848 Stephen Foster song of that name. In Foster's song the title character is a docile, obedient, aging slave who is blind. Rogers turned the caricature on its head by showing Uncle Ned perpetrating what would have been a crime in some Southern states when Foster's song was written: teaching a slave to read. However, the figure of the boy who has stopped studying to tease his teacher presents another stereotype that raises questions about Rogers' intentions. Does the boy represent harmless comic relief, or does he allude to concerns that African Americans lacked the determination and persistence to learn? The present-day scholar Kirk Savage has suggested that Rogers may have juxtaposed the boy and girl to pose a subtle question about which stereotype would prevail: the lazy scamp or the earnest pupil. Rogers' sales catalogues noted that the older man was "too much occupied to attend to" the boy's mischief, suggesting that Uncle Ned will not be deterred in his efforts. Uncle Ned's School was widely praised for its nuanced depiction of a momentous issue. Rogers himself considered it an important work; he exhibited the sculpture at the National Academy of Design, his first contribution in three years. A Philadelphia writer called it much better than any of his previous groups. Rogers presented a copy to the abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher, who responded, "I am pleased with the complete rendering of the story, with a few means, and without exaggeration. Its simplicity is as agreeable as its errand is noble."

The copyright inscription is an indication that this statuette was reproduced in great quanitity. Mayo was also represented in similar costume in a theatrical photograph taken by Sarony of NY. The Museum of the City of NY has a copy of this photograph; CAP, 1974 cat # 1391

We Boys is the first of several groups that demonstrate the artist's long-standing interest in horses; Rogers had written to his mother twelve years before, in 1860, "I want to make studies of animals and horses particularly." He took detailed measurements of a variety of horses, and two years after releasing this sculpture, he displayed studies of equine anatomy at the National Academy of Design. He also studied Eadweard Muybrudge's pioneering photographs of horses in motion. He went on to produce a number of other sculptures in which horses figure prominently, most notably a life-size equestrian monument to the Civil War general John F. Reynolds. Rogers' mastery served him in good stead with We Boys, in which the animal is as important to the action as the humans are. Rogers' catalogue describes how "The boys have brought the horse to the brook. While he has been drinking, the boy who drove him lost the reins, and is trying to regain them with his stick, but is alarmed at the threatening action of the horse, which is turning his head to bite, as he is irritated by the other boy, who is trying to climb on his back, and is pulling himself up by the horse-blanket." Rogers took as his models two neighbor boys near his New Canaan, Connecticut, home, James E. and Joseph M. Silliman. Although the boys are charming in their childlike poses, they are less detailed than Rogers' other figures from this period. Instead, the artist lavished extra care on the horse: its musculature is carefully developed, and the ridges around his nostrils indicate that he is snorting, giving him a vivid sense of action and even personality. Many commentators, familiar with equine behavior, noted that the horse's ears are laid back, indicating its disapproval of the shifting burdens on its back. The horse serves as an authority figure preparing to check the boys' mischief, suggesting the complex relationships that could develop between people and horses who were in daily contact, as was common on the farm and even in the city before the advent of the automobile. Some contemporary writers enjoyed We Boys as a simple scene of country life, but others understood it in nostalgic terms. It was called "a pleasant reminder of the childhood of many a man." One writer spoke directly to his readers: "it is more to you than pretty because you have been there yourself and know all about it." A Mrs. Mary E. Nealy was moved to write a poem based on the sculpture about important men looking back on their humble beginnings, opening with "O happy time of youthful joys! / When you and I were just 'we boys,' / When manhood's sober dignity / Dimmed not life's silver with alloys." The sculpture could be seen as an escape from the cares and complexities of modern life to the simple pleasures of childhood; indeed, Rogers remembered his own youthful years in the country with great fondness. Rogers created two versions of the sculpture. In the more commonly found version the horse's head is down, whereas in the rarer version its head is up and turned back in a more threatening aspect. The Boston Daily Evening Transcript pointed out "the ominous look his [the horse's] eyes have as he rolls them back," even in the more frequently encountered type. Perhaps this gesture of equine annoyance seemed amusing when its head was down, but moving the horse's head back toward the boys may have presented enough of a danger to break the spell of nostalgia. Few copies of the second type survive, suggesting that it sold poorly.

During the 1870s Rogers produced a variety of genre subjects that explore the limits of sentimentality in the context of his dual goals to offer a democratic art that was widely affordable and relatable, and to produce works of fine art. Through the mid-nineteenth century, sentimental culture emphasized the expression of personal feelings among men and women and encouraged an empathetic response toward others. This culture lingered in the popular mind (if not among intellectuals) into the 1860s and 1870s. The Favored Scholar partook of this tradition by offering a scene that resonated strongly with a broad audience, though perhaps not with artistic elites. Rogers depicted a winsome young woman in simple country dress standing at her teacher's desk. This handsome man looks at her with more than scholarly interest as he answers her question about the lesson, writing on her slate. Her reciprocal attraction is clear from the lilacs she has given him, now perched on his desk. Unbeknownst to the teacher, at the girl's feet is a young prankster who has torn pages from a book and twisted them onto his ears to mimic her curls. More evidence of his mischief can be seen on the front of the teacher's desk, which is full of graffiti, including a heart that alludes to the budding romance. The press and the public enthusiastically embraced The Favored Scholar, and it quickly became one of the artist's best-selling works. Rogers' sales catalogues included explanations of the action in his groups, but they tended to offer minimal detail. He wisely allowed viewers and critics to spin their own narratives around his subjects from the visual clues that he provided. Many writers divined from the rustic desk and the girl's attire that this was a country school, lending a feeling of nostalgia for the country's (supposedly) simpler, rural past. Rogers offered an escape into that past at a moment when the country was experiencing a severe economic downturn. In a most jarring juxtaposition, a brief item in Harper's Weekly on The Favored Scholar dated March 15, 1873, is placed next to a story about an urban woman who had to send her children to school with nothing to eat because her husband had lost his job. Above all, contemporary commentators relished the scene's romantic possibilities. As one writer put it, "safe it is to say that the 'Favorite [sic] Scholar' will, some later day, advance to the mathematics of life, and be called upon to prove that one and one make one, in accordance with the rule of the wedding ring." The winning combination of the beautiful but shy young girl, the handsome and eligible man, the obstacles (difficult but eminently surmountable) inherent in their roles, and, finally, the comic relief in the form of the roguish boy offered a rich narrative that captured the hearts of many Americans. Indeed, its appeal is easy to understand today, since it contains all the elements of a successful romantic comedy. Though it may seem overly sentimental to twenty-first-century eyes, Rogers' masterful blend of romance, nostalgia, and escapism made The Favored Scholar an icon of popular culture. However, in future works he did not exploit this easy formula of playing on amorous fantasies. Rather, he turned to other subjects that touched on family life and American intellectual life, specifically literature, history, and theater.

The subject was born in Vöhl, Hesse-Darmstadt, the son of a Lutheran minister. After mercantile experience as a young man in Amsterdam and the West Indies, he immigrated to the United States in 1783 and settled in New York. In 1792 he purchased a 500,000 acre tract of land between Lake Ontario and Lake Oneida which was known as Scriba's Patent. He founded the settlement of Rotterdam (later Constantia) on Lake Oneida where he died. This portrait was a gift to the Society from his grandnephew.

The only group Rogers issued in 1867, this work represents an examiner evaluating a student at a rural school. He sits with legs crossed, his hat resting comfortably under his chair, and he uses his glasses to point out an error on the pupil's slate, while she raises her hand to her mouth in a gesture of worried perplexity. Though his role is to test the nervous young girl, his expression is sympathetic, and the tilt of his head places him on a level below her, rather than above her in a threatening pose. At the apex of this pyramidal composition is the schoolteacher, who is also being evaluated through her student's performance. She is fashionably dressed and, in the words of a contemporary writer, "pretty enough to kiss." Her arm rests on her young student's shoulder in a comforting gesture, and she holds a book against her chin in a bit of heavy-handed symbolism of the group's theme of learning. The scene depicts a moment of tension, one of the small dramas of young life, but it occurs in the context of a capable and benevolent system. Though this is identified as a rural school, Rogers did not offer a vignette of simple country life with a plainly dressed young woman earnestly teaching barefoot, ragged urchins but, rather, made his group a paean to American education. Rogers' depiction was no doubt influenced by his wife, Hattie. She worked as a schoolteacher before their marriage in 1865, and the artist greatly admired his wife's energy, independence, and high spirits. Rogers' admiration may have been directed at Northern schools in particular; one contemporary writer linked this work to Rogers' subject from the previous year, Uncle Ned's School, in which an elderly African American man at his ramshackle cobbler's bench conducts an ad hoc lesson with a shoeless boy and a girl in patched clothing. The writer suggested that the two sculptures depicted the contrasts between the Northern and Southern school systems in the wake of the Civil War. The School Examination became one of the sculptor's more popular groups. It remained in sales catalogues through 1895, but by that time it may have taken on a different meaning for its viewers. Rather than a tribute to progressive education, it might have evoked nostalgia for a system that was rapidly changing, as the federal government moved to create uniformity throughout the nation's schools in the years after the Civil War.