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THE CAPITOL DOME 35 ably the best-known sculptor in America. Long aer his death, yet another work from his hand made its way into the collection. In 1930, Mrs. Horace Gray bequeathed Saint-Gaudens's relief portrait of her hus- band to be placed in the new Supreme Court building. Other Irish-Americans who carved portrait busts for the Capitol are Martin Milmore (1844–1883) and Robert Cushing (1841–1896), both of whom were born in Ireland, and Ulric Dunbar (1862–1927), whose father was Irish. Milmore's bust of abolitionist politician and senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts is located in the east corridor outside the Senate Chamber (fig. 6). e bust is signed by the sculptor, dated 1875, and iden- tifies Rome as the location where it was carved. Sumner already had contact with Irish-American sculptors by way of his friendship with omas Crawford, who carved his bust in 1842. 26 e extent of their friendship is evidenced in Sumner's serving as one of the pallbear- ers at Crawford's funeral. Sumner took an interest in "the Irish Question" (the issue of British rule in Ireland and increasing Irish nationalism), and when Frederick Douglass visited Ireland in 1845 he carried a letter of introduction from Sumner to local nationalist politician Daniel O'Connell. All these connections indicate that Sumner will have had a particular interest in Martin Milmore, who, born in Sligo in the West of Ireland, was brought to America by his mother in 1851 in the aer- math of the Great Famine. Raised in Boston, Milmore attended the Boston Latin School, where Sumner had also been a student several decades earlier. Sumner sat to Milmore in 1863, aer which the two became friends and maintained a lengthy correspondence, living, as they were mostly, in different cities. Milmore was to be widely commissioned for Civil War monuments, most notable among them his Sol- diers and Sailors Monument for Boston Common, erected in 1877. However, well before that he had made his name as a portrait sculptor. His original bust of Charles Sumner (1864) was considered a highlight of the genre, although Milmore recognised how lucky he was "to have had a Sumner for a subject." 27 e bust is prominently displayed in a photograph showing the inside of Milmore's workroom in the Studio Building, Boston. Aer the completion of the work, the Boston Transcript noted Milmore was "a young sculptor of more than common promise . . . [who] thus early in his career . . . evinces so strong a hold on the spiritual requirements of his art." 28 e bust, in plaster form, was first exhibited at Boston commercial galleries Hendrickson, Doll & Richards 29 and later Williams & Everetts. 30 Fellow abolitionist Wendell Phillips, who would be portrayed by Milmore just a couple of years later, was fulsome in his praise of the bust, indicating that Sumner needed no other artist to represent him. 31 Activist Lydia Maria Child was glowing in her praise of the bust, describing it as "not only a good likeness, but it is a wonderfully speak- ing likeness, full of the noble soul of the man." 32 In 1869, a group of Sumner's friends proposed to have the work transferred to marble, to be offered to the state govern- ment. 33 It was installed in the State House in Boston in January 1870. 34 e bust in the Capitol is an enlarged version of the plaster original, which is now lost. Commissioned by the commonwealth of Massachusetts in the aermath of Sumner's death and carved by Milmore during his time in Rome in the early 1870s, the bust was then pre- sented to writer George William Curtis, in recognition of the eulogy of Sumner that he delivered in Boston in 1874, three months aer the senator's demise. e Curtis-owned bust was on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for several years. 35 How- ever, in January 1894, two years aer Curtis's death, his widow Anna Shaw Curtis offered the bust to the Senate, where it was immediately accepted. Among the many busts of Charles Sumner executed in his lifetime, Martin Fig. 6. Charles Sumner, by Martin Milmore (1844–1883), 1875