Rip Van Winkle Returned

John Rogers

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rogers secured national patronage through large sales and small profits, producing tinted plaster statuettes that were ubiquitous in late nineteenth-century middle-class homes. Popular mainly due to their storytelling qualities, some eighty thousand "Rogers Groups" were mass-produced and marketed through the sculptor’s New York studio showroom and mail-order catalogues. Rogers often drew on popular literature. In this work based on a short story by Washington Irving published in 1819, the Dutch American protagonist returns as an elderly man after a twenty-year sleep in the Catskill Mountains. Realistic anecdotal details include his tattered clothing, flowing beard, confused expression, and aged dog.

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