The next year Harris studied art at Académie Julian, Paris with, among others, Paul Gauguin and at École des Beaux-Arts where he became massier under Jean-Léon Gérôme.

Featuring works by John LaFarge, Stanford White, Frederick MacMonnies, Bela Pratt, Paulist leader Isaac Hecker wished the church edifice at 59th Street and 9th Avenue in Manhattan to be "an experiment in Democracy in American art."

He would work and live with the Paulists until 1913, taking over from John LaFarge not only the mural paintings of Saints and Parables, but the "complete decorative scheme" of the massive edifice.

William Laurel Harris died at age 54 at his studio adjacent to the Paulist Fathers retreat at Lake George, New York, of a stroke.

He wrote book reviews for the New York Times, compiled a published catalog of murals in the United States for the Fine Arts Federation and, for over 11 years, was contributing editor for Good Furniture magazine.

On the outcome of this struggle hangs the future of American Art.It is by reading the histories of great men that we learn to appreciate the lessons they taught and comprehend the heroic purposes of their lives.

Yet, it is by studying the actions of our contemporaries, and the lives of those men who have immediately preceded us, that we may most easily learn the varying and prodigious forces that have, in our own day, aided in the upbuilding of our American commonwealth.

The lives of great artists are like shining objects floating on troubled water, indicating to us by the direction of their actions the tendency of mighty currents.