What They Liked

Very placid is the river Housatonic as it winds through the Berkshire valleys. So even, so quiet is its flow that it is easily able to mirror the gentle, green elevations of ground which the Berkshire dwellers call hills, and which enthusiastic tourists like to call mountains. As gentle as the hills, as placid as the river, the Berkshire villages rise to break the pleasant monotony of the landscape. Their generous houses, most white and clean, front on broad streets with here and there a stretch of New England common. Their lawns slope gracefully to the languid river. Such a village is Stockbridge.

Stockbridge colonists like to tell the story of their new playhouse, where last week was held the 20th annual Stockbridge Art Exhibit. Twenty years ago, when Edward L. Morse, son of Telegrapher Samuel F. B. Morse, began the tradition of Stockbridge art exhibits, it was natural that he stepped-across the street from his own "White Lodge" to the Casino which stood opposite. Like all colonists, he was proud of the Casino.

Here, until last year,-Stockbridge artists displayed their wares. Dean of the colony, of course, was Sculptor Daniel Chester French. Every colonist, every tourist, knew his Minute Man at Concord, N. H. It was in his Stockbridge studio that he modeled the great Lincoln of the Memorial at Washington. The design of the Minute Man was accepted in 1873. Last week, his daughter, Margaret French Cresson, viewed with pride his latest figure in bronze. It was called Whence, Whither, Wherefore. As chairman of the exhibition, Daughter could draw attention to Father's fine mastery of detail. But she allowed others to point out her own bronze portrait bust of Commander Richard E. Byrd.

Next to the family of French, the family of Johansen has added most distinction to the exhibitions in the old Casino. Painter John Christen Johansen came first to Stockbridge to visit his good friend Walter Leighton Clark. Enchanted, he remained to colonize, paint. Great and friendly is the rivalry between Painter Johansen and Painter Jean MacLane. Both rank with the foremost U. S. portrait painters, whose canvasses are held bargains at $5,000.

Last week, Painter MacLane exhibited many a watercolor, and oil portraits of Mrs. D. Percy Morgan Jr., and of 14-year-old Samuel F. Thomas, son of Mr. and Mrs. Finley Thomas of the Stockbridge colony. Sparkling, vivid with life, this portrait attracted particular comment. But some visitors preferred Painter Johansen's study of his 12-year-old son. Not all visitors knew that Painter Johansen and Painter MacLane are man and wife.

Last year, a crisis came in the affairs of the Stockbridge art colony. Spinster Mabel Choate bought the property on which the Casino stood, and proposed to erect a memorial to her famed father, Lawyer-Ambassador Joseph Hodges Choate. She offered the Casino to anyone who would cart it away.

Into the breach jumped Colonist Walter Leighton Clark. A comparative newcomer to Stockbridge, Colonist Clark had been a businessman. Not until he was over 50 did he begin to paint. Last week, his portrait of beautiful Louise Osborne, herself a musician and a Stockbridge colonist, was judged among the best. In 1923, his growing interest in art led him to found the Grand Central Art Galleries in the Manhattan railroad station. He wished to offer ambitious U. S. artists an opportunity to exhibit their work without sending it abroad.

Colonist Clark said he would move the Casino, transform it into the headquarters of the Three Arts Association. It should be dedicated to music, drama, art. He ran into difficulties. Nervous colonists, fearing for velvety grass, symmetrical trees, refused to allow him to move it bodily. Accordingly, he pulled it down and moved it stick by stick to its new setting farther down the street. It became, the Berkshire Playhouse.

The Playhouse is very new, very magnificent for simple Stockbridge. Not even the familiar sculpture of Master Craftsman French and the portraits of the Johansens could altogether take away a sense of strangeness. Colonists, last week, saw Albert Sterner's dramatic Lady Macbeth, the fine portraits by the sisters Emmett: Lydia Field and Leslie. Sculptor Henry Augustus Lukeman, successor of John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum in chiseling the heroic Stone Mountain relief, showed Vanity, a bronze figure of a woman with a mirror. These were the work of the native colonists.

But others were not so familiar. Colonist Clark had drawn on the resources of his Manhattan gallery. In the old Casino days, only the colonists took their masterpieces to the exhibitions. Last week, many an artist was represented whose connection with Stockbridge had been a fleeting visit to the Berkshires.

The twentieth Stockbridge Art Exhibition was more glittering, more splendid, than the first or the nineteenth. But some few colonists looked a little wistfully at their hills, their peaceful river. For 20 years, they had known what they liked. They were not quite certain that they liked change.