The Berkshires as muse.(Current and coming.)

Berkshire County in western Massachusetts is one of the most visually captivating regions of New England. Nearly equidistant from New York City and Boston, it was discovered in the nineteenth century by affluent residents of those cities and by artists, writers, and musicians who were drawn to the quiet beauty of the scenery and the fellowship of like-minded individuals who had settled there permanently or came for the summer.

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A small, tightly focused exhibition on view at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, examines how the Berkshires inspired the American landscape painter George Inness, who traveled there in the summer and autumn between the 1840s and the 1870s. Inness is known to have executed some thirty paintings of the Berkshires, nearly a dozen of which comprise A Walk in the Country: Inness and the Berkshires, an exhibition on view at the Clark Art Institute until April 17. The paintings are accompanied by photographs, letters, and other documents pertaining to both the artist and his patrons in the Berkshires.

Inness found the surroundings to be an inspirational springboard, but his landscapes are rarely exact depictions of what he saw. The sketches he made on the spot were merely a point of departure for his oil paintings, which he created in the studio.

The artist enjoyed the generosity of four patrons who summered or lived full time in the Berkshires. Chief among them when Inness was embarking on his career was Ogden Haggerty, a wealthy New York businessman who owned a summer retreat in Lenox called Vent Fort. He was Inness's first patron and even underwrote the artist's initial trip to Europe from 1851 to 1852. Haggerty had a penchant ...