Background
Helen Farnsworth Mears was the third daughter and youngest child of John Hall Mears and Mary Elizabeth (Farnsworth) Mears. She was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, of Scottish ancestry on both sides. Her father was a native of Hawkesbury, Ontario, and her mother, of Groton, Massachusetts. Both parents were well endowed mentally; the mother had attained modest fame as a writer. In early childhood, Helen shaped figures in any plastic stuff she could find mud, dough, putty, tar until her father gave her clay. Later he guided her attempts, and since he had studied to be a surgeon, taught her something of anatomy. At the age of nine, she exhibited at the county fair a clay head of Apollo, baked in her mother's oven. When she was sixteen, photographs of her kneeling figure called "Repentance" were shown to Ward and to Saint-Gaudens, both of whom expressed interest by inviting her to their workshops.
Education
Mears attended Oshkosh State Normal School, now a branch of the University of Wisconsin.
Career
During a few weeks of study under Lorado Taft at the Chicago Art Institute, she received an order for a nine-foot statue, "The Genius of Wisconsin, " to represent that state at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893). This work, cut in marble, was later placed in the rotunda of the Capitol at Madison, Wisconsin, and won from the Milwaukee Women's Club a prize of $500. With her prize money, Helen Mears went to New York to study at the Art Students' League. Here her modeling met approval from Saint-Gaudens, who accepted her as an assistant in his private studio. Under this uncompromising but friendly master, her progress was real. Aided by a wealthy woman, she went to Paris and broadened her horizon by seeing museums and monuments, as well as by studying under the painters Raphael Collin and Luc Olivier Merson, and the sculptors Alexandre Charpentier and Denys Puech. While Saint-Gaudens was in Paris, engaged on his Sherman equestrian group and other undertakings, she again acted as one of his assistants. She exhibited in the Salon and visited Italy. In 1898, she received in competition the commission for the marble statue of Frances E. Willard, gift of the State of Illinois to the National Capitol at Washington, D. C. Both the first and second blocks of marble revealed bad faults after much work had been spent on them, and were discarded for a third. The statue was unveiled in Statuary Hall in 1905. At the St. Louis Exposition of 1904, her monumental three-paneled wall fountain, "The Fountain of Life", received praise from distinguished critics and won a silver medal. It was the most ambitious project of her lifetime. Saint-Gaudens' faith in her ability appears in the thoughtful letters of counsel he wrote to her about these two efforts, the Frances Willard statue, and the fountain, her main endeavor for five years. In 1907, she became a member of the National Sculpture Society. Although competent criticism had already pointed her out as a figure of unusual promise, it is recorded that privation hastened her end. She died suddenly in her studio in Washington Square, New York, on February 17, 1916.
Membership
a member of the National Sculpture Society
Personality
A quantity of Mears's good work in many stages, bearing witness to her spiritual outlook, her intellectual grasp, and her tireless self-dedication.