Desperately trying to organize (and share) the last six months of garden experiences, I begin with my visit in August to Chesterwood, the summer home of sculptor Daniel Chester French.
Robert Vonnoh, Daniel Chester French, oil on canvas, 1913
One of the most successful artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, French grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, a community I work within. One of his first, and most iconic pieces, the Minute Man graces the Old North Bridge at Minute Man National Historical Park. I have photographed it many times.
Perhaps it was French’s early influences in Concord, a quintessential New England landscape and home of the transcendentalist movement, that attracted him to Chesterwood, a 122-acre property west of Stockbridge. The former Marshall Warner farm, it includes a mix of open fields, stone walls and woodlands with a panoramic view of Monument Mountain.
French purchased Chesterwood in 1896 and began the construction of the garden shortly thereafter. Classically European in design, its layout includes an aesthetically pleasing series of outdoor rooms integral to the family’s social and recreational life.
A harmonious and elegant blend of formal and naturalistic features, Chesterwood’s landscape reflects French’s artistic sensibilities. Featured in American Homes and Gardens in 1909, it is described as unexpectedly beautiful; “an enchanted space….arranged with great simplicity but in quite a formal way.”
According to the magazine, “The mind of the artist, his creative sense, his feeling of beauty, his love of nature are abundantly apparent at every point. This is the supreme quality of this beautiful estate, a quality as rare as it is fine; for one realizes, as one wanders through these grounds, that here is something beyond the unusual, and actually in the realm of the artistic.”
The garden, which is partially enclosed, is entered through a vine covered archway. A gravel pathway, bordered with perennial planting beds, leads to a circular court-like area featuring a marble cement fountain. The fountain is decorated with dancing putti and garlands.
On axis with the fountain and doorway to French’s studio, is a formal pathway (or allée), that leads to the woodland walk where an ornamental arch demarcates the boundary between the cultivated and natural landscape. The path is lined with standard hydrangeas, peonies, and annual plantings.
A pair of white-glazed terra-cotta columns mark the entry to the ledges trail which connects to the Woodland Walk.
French’s studio, which is guarded by a pair of marble dolphins, features a large, sky-lit workroom and reception room.
A south-facing piazza provides a view of Monument Mountain and the surrounding landscape.
Today, the studio contains examples of the sculpture, plaster casts and working models that document French’s prolific work.
South of the Studio, set in a hemlock hedge, is a pergola covered with grape vines and Virginia creeper. This provides yet another secluded spot in which to sit, on benches designed by French, to contemplate the dramatic distant views.
An active gardener, French kept a series of garden notebooks from 1897 to 1931 in which he recorded his work on the property. He is credited with selecting a variety of flowers for the beds throughout the formal area including lilies, delphiniums, holly hocks, phlox, and campanula and actively maintaining the garden, clipping hedges, and tending to the vegetable gardens and grape vines.
For 35 years, French summered at Chesterwood and cultivated his garden, imploring colleagues to visit. “I hope you will come to ‘Chesterwood’ and rest.” he wrote in 1911. “It is as beautiful as fairy-land here now, the hemlocks are decorating themselves with their light-green tassels and the laurel is beginning to blossom and the peonies are a glory in the garden. I go about in an ecstasy of delight over the loveliness of things.
The home movie, above, is from the Concord Museum’s exhibition, From the Minuteman to the Lincoln Memorial: The Timeless Sculpture of Daniel Chester French.
Following French’s death in 1931, his daughter Margaret French Cresson worked to preserve the property, donating it to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1968.
Chesterwood is open from Memorial Day to Columbus Day from 10 am to 5 pm. To learn more about Chesterwood, and its 50th anniversary celebration in which a new biography of Daniel Chester French by Harold Holzer has been published, visit: https://www.chesterwood.org/.
The Melvin Memorial, above, was erected at at Concord’s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in 1908 to honor three brothers killed in the Civil War. Casting Bread Upon the Waters, below, in Boston’s Public Garden honors philanthropist George Robert White.
Copyright © 2018 Patrice Todisco — All Rights Reserved
I will now make a special effort to visit this garden. From your photos, there seem to be two exits from the formal garden area, one marked by fluted columns, the other by what you describe as an ornamental arch. I couldn’t tell if the slabs supporting the arch are rough-cut granite or carved. In either case, is there harmony or incongruity between the fluted columns and the ‘ornamental arch’?
Pat,
Should you visit Chesterwood plan on also seeing Naumkeag and The Mount; both have benefited from ongoing restoration efforts and are quite lovely. As for Chesterwood, the garden and its sculptural elements appear in harmony with each other and are viewed from different perspectives. On another visit, I would spend more time on the woodland trail which they connect.
Patrice