Helen Farnsworth Mears

Helen Farnsworth Mears

Helen Farnsworth Mears (1878-1916) was an American sculptor.

Early life and career

Mears was born in Oshkosh, Wis., and studied at the State Normal School in Oshkosh and art in New York and Paris. She was one of a group of women sculptors christened the White Rabbits who worked under Lorado Taft producing sculpture for the World Columbian Exposition .

Her most important works include a marble statue of Frances E. Willard (1905, Capitol, Washington) that is included in the National Statuary Hall Collection; portrait reliefs of Edward MacDowell (Metropolitan Museum, New York); and Augustus St. Gaudens; portrait busts of George Rogers Clark and William T.G. Morton, M. D. (Smithsonian Institution, Washington). In 1904 her "Fountain of Life" (St. Louis Exposition) won a bronze medal. She made New York her residence and exhibited there and in Chicago.

In 1910 George B. Post, the architect of the Wisconsin State Capitol Building then being designed attempted to secure the services of the well known sculptor Daniel Chester French to create a statue of "Wisconsin" to be placed on top of the dome. However French, having as much work as he desired, turned the commission down and so Post recommended Mears for the job. Without waiting for a formal contract she immediately began working on a model, even visiting French in the course of her work. Shortly thereafter Post received a letter from French indicating that he was interested in the task and was quickly awarded it. Mears was paid $1,500 for the work that she had already done, but the loss of the commission was a shock from which she never recovered. [Rajer & Style]

Following the debacle surrounding the Wisconsin capitol statue Mears health declined as did her financial well-being and she died penniless at the age of 45.

References

* Rajer, Anton and Christine Style, "Public Sculpture in Wisconsin: An Atlas of Outdoor Monuments, Memorials and Masterpieces in the Badger State", SOS! Save Outdoor Sculpture , Wisconsin, Madison Wisconsin, 1999
* Rubenstein, Charlotte Streifer, American Women Sculptors, G.K. Hall & Co., Boston 1990
*


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