Since the late nineteenth century, California’s Monterey Peninsula and its wondrous landscape has been a magnet for artists: Its first art colony was settled in 1875 by Jules Tavernier, making it one of the longest established art colonies in the country. Once the Southern California Pacific’s Del Monte Express Railroad and the Hotel Del Monte were completed in 1880, tourism boomed and people from all over the United States came to the Peninsula. The public was exposed to a new lifestyle, new terrain, and local artists—subjects never seen in California painting before the works were exhibited in the hotel’s art gallery in 1907.
