Weekend Jaunt To Chesterwood

It was a beau­ti­ful week­end, Mary Lee and I took a trip up to Stock­bridge, MA to visit Chester­wood, it opened this week­end for the sea­son and fea­tured a clas­sic car show on the grounds.  Chester­wood is the coun­try home, stu­dio and gar­dens of America’s fore­most sculp­tor of pub­lic mon­u­ments, Daniel Chester French (1850 – 1931). Sit­u­ated on 122 acres in the idyl­lic ham­let of Glen­dale near Stock­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts, the prop­erty and build­ings were donated to the National Trust for His­toric Preser­va­tion by French’s daugh­ter, Mar­garet French Cres­son (1889 – 1973). Inspired by the nat­ural beauty of the Berk­shire Hills, French pur­chased the Mar­shall Warner farm in 1896. Dur­ing the month of May, he left his per­ma­nent home and stu­dio in New York for six months and moved with his fam­ily to Chester­wood, where he con­tin­ued to work on over 200 pub­lic and pri­vate com­mis­sions. Many of French’s plas­ter sketches includ­ing mod­els of his Abra­ham Lin­coln for the Lin­coln Memo­r­ial are on view today in his Stu­dio as well as in the per­ma­nent exhibit, Daniel Chester French: Sculpt­ing an Amer­i­can Vision, in the Barn Gallery. Vis­i­tors to Chester­wood are invited to explore the beau­ti­ful for­mal gar­dens and wood­land paths cre­ated by French himself.  

Chester­wood is a National Trust His­toric Site owned and oper­ated by the National Trust for His­toric Preser­va­tion and rec­og­nized as a National and Mass­a­chu­setts His­toric Land­mark. The National Trust for His­toric Preser­va­tion pro­vides lead­er­ship, edu­ca­tion, advo­cacy and resources to a national net­work of peo­ple, orga­ni­za­tions and local com­mu­ni­ties com­mit­ted to sav­ing places, con­nect­ing us to our his­tory and col­lec­tively shap­ing the future of America’s stories.

In April 2010. Mervin Richard, Direc­tor of Con­ser­va­tion at the National Gallery of Art, and Chesterwood’s Ger­ard Blache and Brian McEl­hiney put the fin­ish­ing touches on Daniel Chester French’s six foot model of Abra­ham Lin­coln for the Lin­coln Memo­r­ial, which has returned to Chester­wood after being on dis­play for over a year at the National Gallery of Art in Wash­ing­ton, DC.

We were able to tour the main house, stu­dio and exhibits in the barn while there, along with see­ing many fine example’s of the clas­sic cars on dis­play through­out the grounds.  In my opin­ion the best of show were the 1950 Jaguar MK V, which was pur­chased new and is still owned by the same fam­ily.  This car under­went a $92,000 restora­tion within the last decade.  Also very impres­sive was the Packard Limo, which I think was either a 1924 or 1925.  My vote for the coolest hood orna­ment was the red devil adorn­ing a 1947 MG.

Again I was a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed to see only one lonely Cadil­lac parked on the grounds, a fine exam­ple of a 1955 sedan that is all orig­i­nal except for the paint.  It was a won­der­ful day, with beau­ti­ful weather, in a very senic spot.  Hope­fully next year, the “Gray Lady” will occupy a spot on the lawn right out­side of the main house.  If the weather coop­er­ates our plan is to travel up to Saratoga Springs, NY next Sat­ur­day to visit the Saratoga Car Museum, where the Cadil­lac LaSalle Club is spon­sor­ing a show on the grounds of the museum.  The museum itself has a spe­cial show­ing of Amer­i­can Wood­ies, I think 13 of them are on dis­play owned by the same person!

Body shop updates will fol­low this week.…

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