After William Ordway Partridge (American, 1861-1930), "Melville Weston Fuller (1833-190), Chief Justice of the United States (1888- 1910)", marble bust, former inscription(?) on rear edge of socle apparently effaced, height 13 1/2 in., width 14 1/2 in. E800-1200 Note: This sculptural portrait matches painted ones of Fuller in his judicial robes, that suggested a comparison with Mark Twain, whom he is said to have resembled (John V. Orth, "Fuller, M. W.", American National Biography, Oxford, 1999, vol. 8, pp. 555-558). The under-life size scale of this bust parallels Fuller's own short stature (he was only 5 ft. 6 in. tall), and it suggests the genial, easygoing temperament that made him a popular and capable leader, both in the judicial world and in the Democratic Party. At the beginning of his career, in Chicago, he supported Stephen A. Douglas in his 1858 Senatorial race (and famous debates) against Abraham Lincoln, as well as in Douglas's 1860 bid for the Presidency; Grover Cleveland appointed him Chief Justice in 1888, and although Theodore Roosevelt tried to force his resignation, he died still in office, during a Fourth of July holiday in his native Maine. W. O. Partridge, a sculptural student of J.-A. Merci‚ in Paris in the early 1880s, studied also in Rome, from which he returned to the U. S. in 1889. Within six months he had secured the first of his many public commissions, a bronze "Shakespeare" for Lincoln Park in Chicago, where he could well have met the long-standing legal associates of Fuller's who may have suggested that he model the new Chief Justice. Partridge's full-size bust of Fuller is in the United States Supreme Court in Washington.