Photographic Portraits
Americans
Portrait of William Laurel Harris, 1870–1924. gelatin silver print, prob. New York City ca. 1915.
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Windsor, Vermont born William Laurel Harris studied as a boy under the influential American Artist Thomas Wilmer Dewing, part of the “Cornish Colony” grouped professionally around the sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens and his studio in Cornish, N. H. While just 16 years of age, Harris was in New York City studying at the Art Students League, and when 18 in Paris at the Ecóle de Beaux Arts under Gerômè, and the (old) Academe Julian. Returning to America in 1896, Harris assisted in the mural painting of the Library of Congress and painted, himself, most of the interior of the Paulist Father’s Church (Church of St. Paul the Apostle, 9th Ave. and 59th Sts.) He was secretary of the Fine Arts Federation, and Vice-president of the Architectural League under the tenure of Edwin Howland Blashfield, another American Artist who, like Harris, painted murals exclusively for the duration of his career. William L. Harris was made President of the New York City Municipal Art Society in 1912, and painted other church edifices, notably St. Nicholas of the children in Passaic, N. J., and the chapel of Sacred Heart monastery, Hunt’s Point, N.Y. Harris summered at the Paulist retreat in Lake George, N.Y. and visited his family in Windsor County, Vermont on a regular basis until his death, 3 July, 1924, at age 54. He is buried in Windsor, Vermont.
[See his Wikipedia entry here.|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Laurel_Harris]
