The artists who knew the artists Joaquin Turner’s elegy to Carmel’s bohemian painters

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By Dennis Taylor

A plentiful portion of wall space inside Joaquin Turner’s Carmel-by-the-Sea gallery honors the rich, storied art history of the Monterey Peninsula.

It’s a legacy Turner sees decomposing year by year — one he struggles mightily to preserve, regaling gallery visitors with colorful tales of once-famous Peninsula bohemians who deserve to be remembered.

The self-styled art historian is a celebrated artist himself, an oil painter who honors his near-mythical predecessors with “delicate strokes” of his own brush.

“Every time I get a new painting in the gallery, I try to dig up as much history as I can about that particular piece, and the artist who created it,” said Turner, whose gallery sits in the middle of the block on the west side of Dolores Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, (next door to the famous Carmel Art Association). “And when I find a home for that piece, I try to pass along the whole story of the painting. I want it to be as meaningful to the buyer as it is to me.”

As a lover of early California art, his favorite era spans from around 1880 to 1925 — a time, says Turner, when the world held great admiration for things that were masterfully handcrafted, like furniture and furnishings, architecture, poetry and literature, jewelry, sculptures and paintings.

Era of disposable things

“We live now in an era of disposable things — things that are meant to last for a year or two, and then you throw it out and find something new,” he lamented. “But I also sense a yearning for that time, a century ago, when those wonderful, handcrafted works of art were in vogue.” 

But appreciation for invaluable things always comes back, Turner optimistically declares. He senses a resurgence in interest among young people — teenagers to those in their early 20s — who wander into his gallery and find themselves riveted to the oldest art on his walls.

“It’s actually very new to them — it’s real California history that’s tangible and offers a completely different experience to what they’re used to looking at on their phones and computer screens,” he said. 

“They stare at the colors, the layers, the delicate strokes and are intrigued by how the early artists were able to capture the spirit and mood of the local landscape in such an evocative way.”

Birth of ‘the colony’ 

In 1906, after San Francisco was leveled by an earthquake and a bustling community of artists — some already well-known —became homeless, Carmel real-estate developers Frank Powers and James Franklin Devendorf offered individual plots of land for the absurd price of $10 down. They also allowed the artists to pay whatever they could afford each month toward their land, often with no interest.

That philanthropic gesture sparked a migration of refugees that included celebrated writers Mary Austin (who lived in a treehouse on her plot), Sinclair Lewis, Jack London, Upton Sinclair and Charles Stoddard, poet George Sterling, photographer Arnold Genthe, artists Anne Bremer, E. Charlton Fortune, William Keith, Clark Hobart and Armin Hansen, among others. And the soon-to-become-famous Carmel Art Colony was born.

‘Monterey Style’

The work those painters created was its own unique movement. 

“Early newspaper articles called it ‘the Monterey Style’ — a kind of mix between moody, tonalist painting and what became known as California impressionism,” he said. “I’ve been drawn to the style ever since I was a little kid.”

Turner was born into a military family on the Fort Ord army base and raised in Germany, where his father Joaquin Sr. was stationed, accompanied by his wife Gerlinde.

“My parents drove my sisters and me all over Europe, where we visited amazing museums, and saw the old churches and ancient castles,” he said. 

“As a little kid, I’d see those castles on hilltops in the distance, in the fog, and my imagination ran wild, thinking about the battles that took place there … the knights … the kings … all of that kind of stuff.”

Wandering through European museums had a similar effect on Turner, the young boy. In fact, he can identify the day — the precise moment — that he decided he needed to become an artist.

The weeping woman

“I was probably 10 years old, and I remember noticing a woman who was staring at a painting with tears running down her face,” Turner said in a 2017 interview. “And I suddenly began to understand, even at that age, the power that art can have.”

The boy immediately told his parents that he wanted to learn to paint with oils, because that’s what the Old Masters had used. 

“They thought I was probably going through a phase,” he said. “But when I was still bugging them three years later, they found a teacher in Germany, who gave me lessons and showed me the fundamentals.”

Turner’s paintings today are very reminiscent of the Old Masters style — dark, moody, hauntingly beautiful — but he gravitates toward many of the same subjects that inspired those early California painters: eucalyptus, cypress, oaks and Monterey pines, their branches silhouetted in the moonlight, sunset or fog, framing a glowing seascape or landscape. His work frequently feels mysterious, like an Edgar Allen Poe or Emily Dickinson verse come to life.

As an art lover, and as a painter, Turner responds to mystery — a characteristic of the early California tonalist painters, who left intrigue and romance in their artistry, encouraging interpretation from its beholder.

The magic of mystery

“Even as a child, 8 or 9 years old, I’d look at a piece in a museum, wonder about the story behind it, and make up my own story for each painting — which would be my interpretation,” he said. “When I was a bit older, I realized that’s what art is all about: evoking imagination and emotion.”

Those artists who populated Carmel around the turn of the 20th century, and into the 1930s, contributed to their community in generous and meaningful ways.

“Everything that makes Carmel unique stems back to that bohemian art colony,” Turner said. “It was an artist that envisioned Carmel as a quaint, European village … an artist who planted 2,000 Monterey cypress trees along Scenic Drive … an artist who saved Carmel Beach from the development of a huge hotel and resort, and stopped homes from being built on the natural dunes there.”

The bohemian community created and embraced the local performing-arts scene, and participated in the stage productions, writing the plays, and designing costumes and sets, including huge, panoramic murals that served as backdrops at the Forest Theater.

Genesis of the CAA

The artists, of course, founded the famous Carmel Art Association in 1927, then contributed their own paintings to the fundraiser that paid off the mortgage on their building in 1933.

The fabulous steps leading into the CAA’s Dolores Street building today were hand-laid by legendary artists Armin Hansen and William Ritschel. William Posey Silva and John O’Shea planted the garden. 

Other early members of the CAA included Geneva “Gene” Kloss, Paul Kirtland Mays, Burton Shepard Boundey, August Gay, Francis McComas, Paul Dougherty, Percy Gray, Mary DeNeale Morgan and “Effie” Charlton Fortune.

Turner believes Carmel-by-the-Sea deserves to have a museum. 

“There’s so much history here that no single person really knows it all, and we could all benefit from being reminded of Carmel’s incredible past,” said the Peninsula native, who served as CAA president from 2022-24, and now is vice president. 

“During the 10 years that I’ve run my business in Carmel, I’ve found that many newer homeowners don’t live here most of the year, and know very little of our history,” he said. “The interest is there, but there aren’t enough avenues for exposure.”

The flame is flickering

Flame-keepers of that art history are becoming harder to find. Turner frequently feels saddened when he sees obituaries of the artists who knew the artists … who knew the artists.

Carmel Art Association icon Dick Crispo, 80, shared a story in a 2017 interview about befriending colony co-founder E. Charlton Fortune (“Effie” to her friends) in the 1960s.

Fortune at the time was a quiet resident of Carmel Valley Manor, living in obscurity, having “retired” from painting her landscapes and marine scenes in the 1930s after a San Francisco art critic wrote an unflattering review of her work. (She eventually returned to her easel to paint religious art for Monterey Guild projects until 1958).

“She was very quiet, and didn’t even have paints in her room,” Crispo recalled. “Nobody at the Manor seemed to know she was famous. They’d stop by, invite her to come to their painting classes, and ask, ‘Have you painted before?’”

The world-famous artist was all but forgotten.

Crispo, honored in 1980 by U.S. News and World Report as one of the “Top 100 Art Authorities in America,” is part of that vanishing breed of storytellers that Turner reveres.

Still discovering artists

As Chair of the Carmel Art Association’s History and Legacy Committee, Turner and his team aspire to create an historic database of interviews of those people with first-hand knowledge and tales to tell. 

“I’m still discovering paintings right now of lesser-known artists from the early days,” he said. “Whenever I find one, I’ll start researching, digging up as much provenance and history as I can. I try my best to pass on not just a beautiful painting, but also the story of that particular piece, and the artist behind it, giving the work of art an even deeper meaning. 

“These people led such interesting lives that it never gets old for me,” Turner said. “It’s very meaningful.”

View Turner’s art, and learn more about the artist and his gallery, at www.joaquinturner.com.

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