Missouri Life September 2023

previous work indicated that he would be unlikely to “do credit to the state of Missouri.” Nevertheless, in October, Doyle won the commission for the Benton sculpture, too. Both figures were to be carved from the finest Carrara marble. After nearly three years of work, Doyle brought the sculptures to Washington, DC, and installed them in Statuary Hall on December 4, 1897. The installation came as a surprise to the Missouri commissioners who hired Doyle. According to a December 10, 1897, report in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat , Governor William Stone com plained to the paper about the situation: “I was certainly surprised when I read in the Globe-Democrat that Sculptor Doyle had placed the Benton and Blair statues in position in Statuary Hall. [H]is actions are certainly premature. The members of the commission have never seen these statues. I can’t say if the work will be accepted or not. But what if the commission does not accept the work? Mr. Doyle will be left in a most unpleasant situation.” Stone told the newspaper that the commission planned to travel to Washington to see the sculptures in situ . The Globe-Democrat reported that the commissioners met with Doyle and examined the sculptures in Statuary Hall on January 18, 1898. Other interested Missourians were also present, and the consensus was that the depic tion of Francis P. Blair was a more successful likeness than that of Benton. Ultimately, although many observ ers were under the impression that Senator Benton was “a much larger man than the statue suggested,” it was

Far left, a young visitor to the art gallery at the Center for Missouri Studies takes a photo of the newly arrived sculpture of Senator Thomas Hart Benton. Lower left, Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol features likenesses of leading citizens from all 50 states and is a popular site for receptions and speeches. At top, Sculptor Alexander Doyle, shown here in his studio in 1894 working on an unidentified bust, was commissioned to create statues of Senators Thomas Hart Benton and Francis P. Blair. Above, Missouri Governor William Stone headed the commission that selected the artist

agreed that Doyle had endowed the effigy with an atti tude that was suitably “suggestive of Old Bullion’s defi ant bearing.” In the end, the commission accepted both sculptures. Over the years, the Benton sculpture moved around Statuary Hall as new sculptures arrived from other states. Originally, Old Bullion stood between bronze effigies of Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, but by 1910, he and Blair had been moved next to one another. Eventually Statuary Hall became crowded, with sculptures sometimes arranged three-deep around the chamber. On October 17, 1934, The Kansas City Star reported that the Architect of the Capitol had decided that the collective weight of the statues jeopardized the structure of the building. Henceforth, each state could have only one effigy in the Hall. A Library of Congress committee decided that Senator Thomas Hart Benton should stay, while Frank P. Blair would find a home else where in the Capitol. For the next six decades Benton remained in the Hall, but on June 21, 1999, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Missouri Senator John Ashcroft publicly suggested replacing either the Benton or Blair sculpture with one of President Harry S. Truman. The proposal was slow to gain traction, in part because from the time Statuary Hall was created, no state had ever asked to substitute one effigy with another. In 2000, a law was passed allowing states to replace artwork gifted to Statuary Hall. Kansas

and ultimately approved the finished Statuary Hall sculptures representing Missouri.

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