Incidents and Anecdotes of Early Days and History of Business in the City and County of Fond Du Lac From Early Times to the Present, Personal Reminiscences, Remarkable Events, Election Results, Military History, Etc.

              WAS A TALENTED ARTIST
Mark  R.   Harrison  and  His  Dioramas.     Some   Noted  Work  of  a
Fond du Lac Artist.
Few people now residing in Fond du Lac, know that one of the noted artists of modern times resided here many years and died only about ten years ago—1895. He did much skillful work in his time. He came here from Hamilton, Canada, with a brother in 1848, to engage in navigation on Lake Winnebago and Fox River. They owned the steamboats Manchester and D. B. Whitacre, but both were slow tubs and remained in commission but a few years. They were sold and Mark R. Harrison opened an artits's studio in the north end of the old Darling's block, and remained there several years and until he had erected one of the buildings on his Sixth street property, about the year i860. During these years he painted some fine pictures which he shipped to New York, where some were sold at high prices and others taken to London, where they sold at enormous prices. A few found their way to Paris and to other noted capitals of Europe. Some one wronged Mr. Harrison and he never received proper pay for these works of art.
About 1858, Thos. H. Stevenson came here and joined Mr. Har¬ rison in painting pictures for an Art Union. Mr. Stevenson was an inebriate, but a remarkably fine painter, especially of animals in motion. A large number of paintings were perfected and Miss Libbie Farnsworth wrote a poem for the art union, printed neatly in book form, entitled, "Voyage of Pere Marquette and History of Charles de Langlade." The tickets being all sold, the drawing took place with the result that many of the best pictures remained in Fond du Lac. "Heart of the Andes," the prize picture, went out of town. Some of those Harrison & Stevenson Art Union pictures are still in Fond du Lac parlors. The paintings were largely of rural scenes and very pretty.
Stevenson's habits now became so unreliable that he was given transportation and induced to return to his home in Cleveland, Ohio, but in 1859 1^^ appeared here again and joined Mr. Harrison in the production of the noted Dioramas, one of the finest achievements in art ever witnessed in this country. The scenes were each the size of a theatre scene, the canvas for which was especially prepared by the making of opaque, transparent and semi-transparent places in it, so that by the application of colors on them and the proper placing of lights before and behind the scene, all sorts of effects could be produced. In the picture of Belshazzar's Feast, for instance, five beautiful scenes, all of them different, were produced by the mere placing of the lights. One scene would slowly fade away into dark¬ ness, and another, wholly different, would immediately begin to ap-