"TIME CAPTURED IN PAINTINGS"
A Film on Monterey's Early Art Colony
by Steve Hauk
The video "Time Captured in Paintings" was initially made in 1991 and the next year won a prestigious national documentary award, a CINE Golden Eagle, in Washington, D.C. Narrated by Academy Award-winning actor Jack Lemmon and produced by the Monterey Museum of Art, it was perhaps the first non-commercial or non-dealer video made on the early California artists. Recently remade, retitled and expanded, "Time Captured in Paintings - The Monterey Legacy" premiered last March. In December, it was announced, the new version had earned yet another CINE Golden Eagle, which will be presented early this year in Washington. The premiere of "Time Captured in Paintings - The Monterey Legacy" was given in Monterey at the Naval Post Graduate School. The school educates Navy officers, but at the turn of the century those same buildings were the site of a landmark art exhibit in one of the country's great resort inns, the Old Hotel Del Monte, visited by presidents, power brokers and celebrities. Benjamin Harrison stayed in 1891, horseback-riding Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 "We had some splendid gallops," he wrote his daughter Ethel. Jean Harlow swam nude in the Roman Plunge, the pool where Johnny Weismuller practiced his breaststroke and Hemingway sat deckside jotting literary notes. The landmark exhibit was held in 1907 and helped pull California art and artists out of the doldrums being experienced by people from every walk of life following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. It led to a gallery that "was maintained by the hotel management as a permanent display of the best work of Western painters," and became the first venue devoted exclusively to the sale of California art. Many of the painters who exhibited at the Del Monte made up the strong Monterey Peninsula artists' colony and a number of these are profiled in "Time Captured in Paintings - The Monterey Legacy."
Mary DeNeale Morgan (1868-1948) - photograph courtesy of Monterey Museum of Art
Artists had long known of the area's scenic richness, beginning as early as 1786, when the first European artist, French painter Gaspard Duche de Vancy, arrived with explorers. Nearly a century later painters Jules Tavernier and Julian Rix were discovering Old Monterey and forming a colony of "Bohemians" about the same time Robert Louis Stevenson was on hand courting Fanny Osbourne. . But it was after the 1906 earthquake that a large number of painters, fleeing the San Francisco Bay Area, began to make their homes in Monterey, Carmel, Pacific Grove and other area communities. Carmel set up a tent city to shelter survivors of the disaster. One of those who took advantage of the generosity was Impressionist, some call her a Post-lmpressionist, E. Charlton Fortune (1885-1969), who lost many of her early works when the family's San Francisco home was dynamited during the earthquake. But Fortune and her mother considered themselves lucky to escape with their lives. Fortune painted a small oil of a flaming sky, a powerful remembrance of that night. In "Time Captured in Paintings - The Monterey Legacy," Fortune's character is recalled through her witty, self-depreciating letters. "Fortune's paintings are among the best when they exemplify the essential tenets of French Impressionism adapted to the light and landscape of California," said Harvey Jones, senior curator of art of the Oakland Museum of California.
"I rank her very high in her best work, certainly. Her only rival might be Guy Rose in the Impressionistic approach to California landscapes. Of course, there may be arguments in other quarters."
E. Charlton Fortune (1885-1969) - photograph courtesy of Monterey Museum of Art
Others that had, or were, to make their home on the Monterey Peninsula, and are treated in "Time Captured in Paintings - The Monterey Legacy," include Armin Hansen, Francis McComas, Henrietta Shore, William Ritschel, Gottardo Piazzoni and Xavier Martinez. In recent years Armin Hansen's (1886-1957) greatness has begun to be accepted nationally and internationally; accordingly, the prices of his paintings are soaring. The main body of Hansen's work deals with man's struggle against the sea, seeking to make a living from it while trying to surive its forces. He was one of the few California artists of the period who was interested in the immediate relationship of nature and man, which collector Jane Dart discusses passionately in the video. The Monterey Museum of Art has an unsurpassed collection of his work, given by Mrs. Dart and her late husband, Justin. William Ritschel (1864-1945), like Hansen, was a National Academician. German by birth, he arrived in New York in 1895 at the age of 31. He won the Academy's Ranger and Carnegie prizes and eventually settled on the coast south of the Monterey Peninsula. Henrietta Shore (1880-1963) was a Canadian. In her youth she was compared to Georgia O'Keefe. Shore was in New York City in the 1920s. In 1928 she settled in Carmel and, beautiful as that town is, it was probably a mistake, the great photographer Edward Weston once described her as "an artist of destiny .. . lost in Carmel". Still, Shore, a Modernist, was very important to Weston: he wrote it was her paintings that inspired his famous and much sought after shell and vegetable photographs. In "Time Captured in Paintings - The Monterey Legacy," their relationship is explored through letters written by Shore and Weston's words from his daybooks. Gottardo Piazzoni (1872-1945) is remembered in the video by his daughter, Mireille Piazzoni Wood, and her husband, Philip Wood, both artists. They talk about him while sitting on the porch of the Piazzoni ranch in the Carmel Valley, a home that through the decades was visited by artists such as Maynard Dixon, Dorothea Lange and Hansen.
Armin C. Hansen (1886-1957) - Photograph courtesy of Monterey Museum of Art
Piazzoni has been much in the news on the West Coast this year and last. He created interior murals for San Francisco's Old Main Library eight decades ago, but the building has been sold to the Asian Art Museum which proposes removing the murals. Earlier this year San Francisco Examiner art critic David Bonetti wrote a piece that carried the headline: "Trashing the Murals - The Asian Art Museum is poised to destroy a work of art." Bonetti wrote such an act would be one of "willful desecration." The issue has yet to be settled. Of course controversy seldom hurts an artist's reputation. National Academician Gregory Kondos recently quipped that if Piazzoni is looking down viewing the squabbling, he's probably saying, "Just keep it up." While early California artists have gotten their due nationally only over the last few decades, most were well known in California during their lives. When Xavier Martinez (1869-1943), a part Indian Mexican, died in Carmel on Jan 13, 1943, the state legislature adjourned in his honor. Martinez found his way to San Francisco when his stepfather was made consul-general in the city. He studied with Arthur Mathews and won a scholarship to Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he attracted attention through his flamboyant personality as well as his art. He became friends with Whistler, who was a major influence on Martinez' work.
In the video, writer-collector Walter A. Nelson-Rees discusses Martinez and Granville Redmond, whose work was vigorously collected by silent film star Charlie Chaplin. Redmond (1871-1935), the victim of scarlet fever as a boy in Philadelphia, was deaf. But neither speech nor hearing were required to appear in several of Chaplin's films, which he did.
"Time Captured in Paintings - The Monterey Legacy" also looks at events that shaped the Northern California artistic climate, the early explorers, the 1906 earthquake and the Old Hotel Del Monte exhibit, among them. Ironically, a more recent disaster may have rivaled the 1906 earthquake in the destruction of California art, the fire which roared through the Oakland hills in 1991. Many small, fine collections were lost and Nelson-Rees discusses in the video the loss of the massive collection he built with James L. Coran. Nearly 1,000 paintings of museum quality went up in flames. "Time Captured in Paintings" was made in 1991 to publicize the museum's collection and its new wing, the Monterey Museum of Art at La Mirada, an early adobe designed into museum space by the late Charles W. Moore, F.A.I.A. In 1991 Moore, who designed Dartmouth's Hood Museum, was the recepient of the American Institute of Architects' Gold Medal, awarded just some 50 times since it was inaugerated at the turn of the century.
William Ritschel (1864-1945) - Photograph courtesty of Monterey Museum of Art
La Mirada was Moore's last public building and a symbolic coming full circle, as a young man at Princeton he wrote his master's thesis on Monterey's historic adobes. Winning a CINE (Council on International Non-Theatrical Events) Golden Eagle is, next to the Academy Award, perhaps the most prestigious American award for documentary filmmaking. In fact, some 70 CINE winners have been nominated for the Oscar, and more than 20 have taken it home. More importantly, CINE helps place winning films and videos in international film festivals on six continents. "It seems our timing was perfect in making this film," said Richard Gadd, Monterey Museum of Art executive director. "The work of these artists is receiving a lot of attention; 'Time Captured in Paintings -The Monterey Legacy' gives us a look at them as regionalists and as important people in the community and the art world in general." "Time Captured in Paintings - The Monterey Legacy" was made by Mac and Ava Motion Pictures of Monterey. In addition to narration by Jack Lemmon, it was produced, directed and edited by Steve Rosen and Terri DeBono. The original score is by Jonathon Lee and the script was by this writer. Mary Reese Green was the project coordinator. The video, 28 minutes in length, retails for $19.95; there are also wholesale prices. It is now available at various galleries and through the Monterey Museum of Art (attention Pat Seiling), 559 Pacific St., Monterey, CA. 93940; or call Mrs. Seiling at 408-372-5477; fax 408-372-5680.
Steve Hauk is a former journalist and an art dealer in Pacific Grove, California. He is a former Monterey Museum of Art board member.