Summer 2025

started selling well, to the point where I couldn’t keep up and I would have gaps on the gallery walls.” At the time,Turner had a modest collec- tion of works by California artists that he admired and found inspirational. “I brought some of those pieces into the gallery.” He saw this as an opportunity to show visitors and clients his influences and to explain “tonalism,” the style of painting he practices. Tonalism is a technique popularized around the end of the 19th century characterized by using subtle col- oring to create moody, misty and atmospheric landscapes—exactly the type of vistas the Monterey Peninsula is famous for. Turner was born at Fort Ord, and his earliest visual memories are of the cypress trees that rose between his home and the Monterey Bay. And those indigenous trees are a frequent subject of both his paintings and those of the Monterey Peninsula-area artists who came before him. As did many Army children, Turner spent a large part of his childhood in Germany.“My par- ents took us to museums all over Europe,” he recalls. “The history and art of Europe sparked my imagination at a very young age.The works of the Old Masters especially left a deep impression on me.” Drawing from the time he could hold a pencil, he was 13 when he asked his parents for painting lessons in Germany. By the time the family returned to the Monterey 114 C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R 2 0 2 5 (Above) “Making Port, Brittany” by Edgar Payne (1883-1947). Payne is one of the most popular and well-known early California artists. (Below) “Evening Glow,” a local coastal scene by Joaquin Turner in a 1920s “pie crust” frame.