3° 



BERKSHIRE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



We have had but three reports before us for examination, and fully agree 

 U in the following awards : 



f^ For the report on Paintings and Works of Art, $6; Working Oxen, 4; 



jfj Gardens. 3. 

 ifl Committee — E. B. Wilson, J. A. Royce, Kirk E. Gardner. 



\ 



Report on PaintIngs and Works of Art, rendered September 



15, 1887. 



Berkshire's varied scenery is an educator, and, reasoning a priori, one 



would infer that, besides being the home of thrift, our county should pro. 

 duce not only lovers of the beautiful, but devotees to its representations. 

 Such, however, was not, until recently, an ostensible fact, explainable by 

 another fact — that the struggle for life and comfort by any people must 

 antedate all outgrowths in the decorative art. A livelihood before luxury ; 

 the needful before the ornamental. But the strife for the essential has long 

 since passed ; the painted and well-appointed dwelling has replaced the low- 

 posted, brown cottage, so that the residences of the doctor, "the squire" 

 and the minister of olden time are now rivalled by those which shelter the 

 farmer and the mechanic. 



Until the railroad dug through our rocky barriers eastward, Berkshire 

 was almost a terra incoguita to the coast-dwellers of our State ; commercial 

 transactions being more intimate with New York than with Boston. With 

 the iron highway came a better knowledge of our scenery and attractions. 

 Artists heard of this "western Switzerland," and dropped along more and 

 more frequently to eopy its features and to derive health and inspiration, as 

 well as pictorial capital, from its beauty and sublimity. The sons and 

 daughters of our county saw and admired the products of brush and crayon 

 presented occasionally at our fair. Anon the imitative talent, latent in our 

 youth, began to work into action. Instruction was sought abroad or invited 

 hither, and gradually our homes and our autumnal exhibitions claimed 

 larger space for the outcomes of artistic activity. Its growth we have 

 watched from year to year with increasing satisfaction. The managers of 

 our Agricultural Society have recognized its claims to honor among our in- 

 dustrial interests, and its important bearing upon the internal economy of 

 our households. 



In this connection it is appropriate to mention that a lady of philanthropy, 

 and means to indulge it, whose summer residence is in one of our Berkshire 

 towns, imported a professor in the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts to 

 open, a1 her expense, a school in that town, to which all the pupils of the 

 public schools were invited, and in which some seventy or eighty of them 

 received instruction in drawing, designing, coloring and carving. The 

 benefaction has been repeated during the past season, and the resull has 

 been to develop a surprising amount of natural talent whose education may 

 ilius secure to its possessors aid, (otherwise unobtainable) a prospective live- 

 lihood and possible renown. 



Your committee found the exhibit awaiting them the present year numer- 

 ically smaller, but in quality quite equal to that of former years. It com- 

 prised thirty entries of Oil Paintings, six each of Water Colors and Cray- 

 ons, live of Pencil Drawings, and three of Kensingtons; two of Carved 



