Mary DeNeale Morgan (1868-1948) was the foundational force behind visual arts in Carmel during the first half of the 20th century and – according to art historian Robert W. Edwards – Morgan has been largely forgotten.
“She was the most important female artist from the 1920s through the mid-1940s,” Edwards observes. “She sold more paintings than any other woman in Northern California, and she did so much for the art colony.”
Born into a large, well-to-do family, Morgan entered the San Francisco Art Institute’s California School of Design at 18. Frustrated by schools that promoted male students at the expense of women, she moved to Carmel in 1903 with the ambition of helping to build a new art colony. There she would remain for the rest of her life – unmarried, fiercely private and fully devoted to her work.
Her early paintings were tonalist in style, but 1914 brought a turning point. The visiting American Impressionist William Merritt Chase pressed her to find new subjects and adopt a more aggressive manner. By 1920 she had moved from watercolor and printmaking into large-scale oils. Where other artists painted the picturesque façade of the Stevenson House, Morgan painted its deteriorating back wall.
Morgan’s civic contributions were equal to her output of more than a thousand paintings. She directed the Carmel Summer School of Art, sponsored by the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club, and reshaped that club into a major exhibition venue.
When male members took over the club’s administration after 1921 and began selecting fewer paintings by women, Morgan helped found the Carmel Art Association in response. She donated her art, her time and her teaching; she even acted in local plays. She was also among the first female artists to exhibit at the Del Monte Art Gallery.
Edwards turned to the Monterey Peninsula precisely because its artists had been ignored. Morgan, who died while painting at Point Lobos and has had no retrospective since 1944, embodies that neglect. Yet works like “Two Sisters on Carmel Beach” with its sensuous, almost human-figured trees, reveal an artist whose ambition and reach demand recognition.
Mary DeNeale: Doyenne of the Carmel Art Colony opens Thursday, April 30 at Monterey Museum of Art, 559 Pacific St., Monterey. $15/admission. (831) 372-5477, montereyart.org. On display through Aug. 16.