Summer 2024

“El Rancho del Carmelo (Hatton Ranch),” c. 1920, is one of many works by Fortune in the Monterey Museum of Art’s collection. Their archive holds some of her personal items and an unpublished biography by Monsignor Robert E. Brennan. 152 C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R 2 0 2 4 In 1936, during the Great Depression, the WPA wrote to Fortune asking her to accept an appointment to “a local committee [of the Federal Art Project] composed of persons of recognized authority in the field of art,” and she accepted. The committee would be important to the cultural life of the Mon- terey Peninsula community, responsible for helping “needy artists” and im- proving public buildings. The City of Monterey then appointed Fortune, along with Armin Hansen and Myron Oliver, to oversee improve- ments on Colton Hall, which included painting and redecorating the historic building. Fortune also teamed up with Oliver, for a competition to design the park at Colton Hall, Friendly Plaza. The Fortune-Oliver team won, and the design of Friendly Plaza—a beautiful public garden with brick pathways, stone walls and a fountain—still retains Fortune’s touch. Another major contri- bution to Monterey made by Fortune and MHA is the Path of History, which they created in 1938, and is still widely used today. In the 1930s, Fortune turned from painting to liturgical work. After having success with her designs for St. Angela’s Catholic Church in Pacific Grove (located at 325 Central Avenue), she and architect C.J. Ryland formed a liturgical design firm, which evolved into the Monterey Guild—a group of artists and artisans who worked to pro- duce Fortune’s liturgical de- signs, from vestments to altars and everything in between.The guild was the first in the nation dedicated to the revival of liturgical art and it was Fortune’s effort to revive the system of the medieval guilds. Among the first members of the guild were Myron Oliver and August Gay. The Monterey Guild’s liturgical work can be “An artist’s job is to raise the public’s taste instead of talking about it.” ~ E. Charlton Fortune Photo: Collection of Monterey Museum of Art, Bequest of Robert J. Dwyer, 2010.019