Twenty-five years ago, artist Thomas Hart Benton put on paper the spirit of the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society Livestock Show and Fair.

 

Now the spirit of the fair as depicted by Mr. Benton is available on cotton as well.

 

The Benton egg tempera from 1967, entitled The Fair, is the design on this year’s fair T-shirts and posters. The T-shirts finally became available yesterday.

 

He was walking along the state road with his wife up in West Tisbury. He carried a suitcase, and, although he did not actually wiggle his thumb, he looked hopefully back at the car.

 

His name is Manuel Tolegian of New York city, artist and former student of Thomas H. Benton, summer resident of Chilmark. When he was picked up by the Gazette reporter, he looked slightly warm but grateful, animated and eager. He has a thin, aesthetic face and long, slender hands.

 

Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert - nothing heavy but on the classical side - and Thomas Hart Benton, painter, and author, plays them all on his harmonica. He’s got a special scheme, which he himself devised, for transposing the music into a complicated harmonica score.