The Fisher Girl is not an original composition by Rogers, but rather a copy of a sculpture by a contemporary artist. Early in Rogers' career the Cosmopolitan Art Association commissioned him to reproduce Randolph Barbee's acclaimed statue Fisher Girl of ca. 1858 (Smithsonian American Art Museum). Barbee was a Virginian who joined the colony of American sculptors working in Florence, Italy in the mid-1850s. His marble Fisher Girl was warmly received: the New York Herald called it "the finest work in the Union" with the exception of Hiram Powers' Greek Slave. It was said to have been exhibited at various locations in Europe before coming to the United States, where it was displayed in Washington, D.C. and then New York in late 1859. The sculpture depicts a nude female intent on mending her net. Her idealized pose, carefully articulated musculature, and stylized hair are in keeping with the then-popular neoclassical style. In December of 1859 Barbee's Fisher Girl was purchased by the Cosmopolitan Art Association, a membership organization that distributed works of art by lottery to its subscribers. The Association approached Rogers to model Barbee's sculpture for reproduction for its members. Rogers set to work before the eyes of the public on June 23, 1860 at New York's Dusseldorf Gallery, where the Barbee statue was on display. Rogers completed an initial clay model and cast it in plaster by July 15. The plaster was shipped to the English firm Copeland & Garrett, where it was produced in parian. A soft-paste porcelain hybrid developed in England in the previous decade, the parianware process resulted in a fine-grained finish and a level of detail that produced the effect of marble. Rogers apparently reproduced the work at a smaller scale than Barbee's original, and the firing process reduced the size of the sculpture by about 25%, so that Rogers' version of the statue is approximately half the size of Barbee's sculpture. The Association distributed eleven copies of the sculpture in 1861. The Association's publication the Cosmopolitan Art Journal praised Rogers' efforts, declaring that he had executed the commission "in such a manner as to excite the utmost praise and satisfaction from all who beheld the artist's work." Rogers too was pleased with the result and was briefly inspired to give up plaster and work in the more highly esteemed medium of marble, but he soon returned to plaster and the subjects from American life that earned him national acclaim.

Among the earliest statuettes of baseball players, these figures were cast by New York City founder Nicholas Müller and designed by his brother, Karl Müller, a designer for the Union Porcelain Works in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The figures are made from zinc alloy and patinated to resemble bronze. A contemporary newspaper account described the pair of figures as "so thoroughly good that we shall be surprised if they do not speedily become very popular . . . They are true to nature to a degree that modern sculpture, even what is called the best of it, very rarely reaches, but they satisfy the claims of art as well."

This bronze served as the master model for the plasters that Rogers sold to a broad audience of middle-class Americans. Union Refugees marked a turning point in Rogers' career. Since his 1859 return from study in Europe, he had debated which material to use for his sculptures: plaster, which was less expensive but disdained by the art establishment; or bronze, which, though considered a more elevated medium, was far more expensive both to produce and to sell. After lamenting the cost for several months, Rogers joyfully received an 1863 New Year's gift of $500 from his Uncle Henry Bromfield Rogers that allowed him to make Union Refugees his first bronze cast. Rogers chose spelter, a type of patinated zinc that was cheaper than bronze and therefore could be priced more affordably. The first casts were available for sale by late July, and he offered the sculptures for $60. It is not clear how many orders he received, but since the metal casts are now extremely rare, they probably did not sell well. By August he had decided to return to plaster, writing to his mother, "it is a weight off my mind & in spite of all the trouble I have had with plaster, I feel as I should on coming home from a long tiresome journey." Union Refugees proved extremely popular as a plaster, priced at $15. However, Rogers did not give up bronzes entirely. He complained that reproducing copies from the original (master) plaster wore the original down over time, and he had to create new master plasters frequently. Casting a master in bronze gave Rogers a model that would not only not wear down but would retain its crisp detail. It also allowed Rogers to make his groups much larger: Union Refugees measures twenty-two inches tall, versus the nine-to-fourteen-inch height of his earlier sculptures. The bronze master model permitted Rogers to work in a larger scale with enhanced detail and quality, and his sales increased as a consequence. Rogers chose a particularly evocative subject for this pivotal work, his first to show the war's traumatic effect on civilians. Union Refugees depicts a Southern Unionist family fleeing to the North. The father stands with a resolute expression with a small bundle of belongings hanging from his gun that suggests all the family has left behind. His wife leans against him mournfully, and their son attempts to comfort her with a small bouquet of wildflowers. Rogers told the sad tale by drawing the eye in an arc from the man's gun, with its implied force, carefully balanced on his shoulder, to his stern face, to his wife's distress, to the puzzled and anxious boy who has not yet realized that he has lost his home. The artist began work in the months just after the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation, and this Unionist family's rejection of Southern proslavery views would have had a particularly keen resonance with his Northern viewers. Union Refugees was a critical as well as a commercial success. Rogers displayed the sculpture at the National Academy of Design in 1863 to uniform acclaim. Praise resounded for the patriotic theme and for Rogers' technical skill in depicting it. The New York Commercial Advertiser proclaimed that the sculpture would "deservedly attract attention not just for its subject, but also for its high merit as a work of art." The Springfield Republican called it a masterpiece. Rogers' sculpture was often mentioned in connection with John Quincy Adams Ward's The Freedman (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), a similarly sized bronze of a freed slave displayed at the same National Academy annual exhibition. The classicized pose and heroic proportions of the black man contemplating his liberty would have made a striking pendant to the white family forced to leave their home for their Unionist views. Rogers heroized the loyalty and sacrifices required of Union civilians, not just soldiers, and perhaps reminded his viewers that sacrifices might be required of them as well.

According to Gustavus Eisen, G. Rouse and other fictitious names appeared on a number of wax profiles of Washington in military dress during the first quarter of the twentieth century. They sometimes bear fictitious dates although the reliefs are modern. (See "Portraits of Washington," 3, 1932, pp. 881-82.)

Chantry, who was England's most famous sculptor by 1820, modeled this likeness of West when the celebrated painter was already past seventy, when he had lost the protective support of his royal patron, and when his position had been weakened in the art world by the advance of younger men.