George Washington

John Rogers

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

With the nation’s approaching centennial, the market-savvy Rogers began modeling a statuette of George Washington (1732-1799) in spring 1875. The careful detailing of Washington's garb suggests the artist made use of the many drawings he executed in 1871 and 1872 in preparation for the unrealized group, “Camp Fires of the Revolution.” In pose, costume, and likeness, Rogers’s “Washington” owes much to Jean Antoine Houdon's marble statue of Washington (ca. 1788-91) that was installed in the Virginia State House in Richmond in 1796. "Washington" was patented on October 19, 1875, and was included in the large display of Rogers’s work at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. The statuette, devoid of Rogers’s customary narrative detail, did not sell well and was dropped from his catalogue of available statuary by 1888.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art