Artists At Continent's End: The Monterey Peninsula Art Colony, 1875-1907
February 17 - May 21, 2006

Between 1875 and 1907, the Monterey Peninsula epitomized California art and became home to one of the nation's foremost art colonies. The towns of Monterey, Pacific Grove, and eventually Carmel-by-the-Sea boasted populations of artists who shared their lives, ideals, and respective arts in a free spirit of association and cooperation. By the turn of the century, the Monterey Peninsula attained the distinction of being the new spiritual heart of California. Rich in history with the Mission San Carlos Borromeo headquarters of Father Junípero Serra, and possessing a strange and awesome natural beauty, the area displaced Yosemite in the artistic imagination as California's holiest of cathedrals. The magnetism of the area's landscape was profound, and as word of its beauty filtered to the outside world it became a frequent destination for artists of all disciplines. Artists came to the "Mecca," to worship at the shrine of adobes, the mission, sand-dunes, and cypress trees.

Most historical accounts of the Monterey Peninsula's artistic legacy have erroneously cited the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire as the primary impetus for coastal settlement by artists. In addition, attention has focused primarily on Carmel's writers, marginalizing the role that Monterey's visual artists had played since 1875, when Frenchman Jules Tavernier showed California artists what could be done with the Monterey Peninsula's unique coastal scenery. With Tavernier, art produced on the peninsula broke from the dominant, tightly rendered manner of the Hudson River school then popular in California to become increasingly subjective, meditative, and simple. By 1900, many of the artists in the region had arrived at what may be described as a tonal style, featuring a narrow palette of colors and moody atmospheric effects. Some went one step further, producing canvases reductive in color and form. For others, this progression culminated in impressionism.

By 1907, many of Monterey's first- and second-generation painters had already reached artistic maturity, moved on to other locales, or died. In that year, artists of Monterey, Pacific Grove, and now Carmel-by-the-Sea (which by 1905 could boast its own colony), achieved a new level of professionalism and organization through the opening of Monterey's Hotel Del Monte gallery. Although most California artists visited the peninsula at least once, artists featured in this exhibition either lived on the peninsula, spent a significant amount of time there, or devoted much of their production to peninsula subjects. Their early collective contributions earned the Monterey Peninsula a reputation as an art center, a legacy that endures even to this day.