62001 F4 THE MONTEREY Bonnie ' Gartshore Looking Back 4 4- f.,1 R + t. 4 --_ THE McCOMAS QUOTE Editor' s note: The late Bonnie Gartshore wrote a number of columns in advance. In her honor, we will print her columns through the end ofJuly. nhis"MontereyCountyPlace Names: A Geographical Dictionary," Donald Thomas Clark lists Point Inbos as "a . ' magnificent forested, rocky headland marking the S end of Carmel Bay, once described by Francis McComas, the landscape watercolorist, as'the greatest meeting of land and water in the world.'" Kurt Loesch, Point Lobos historian, has been trying to find out how and where McComas voiced this description which, through the years, has been attributed to Robert Inuis Stevenson, Robinson Jeffers and even Henry Miller. The earliest reference to this oft-quoted description that Loesch has been able to find is a 1933 state parks booklet written I by Aubrey Drary. And it turned I up again in the July 1938 issue of American Forests. But in neither place does it say that the description had been written as part of an exhibition of McComas' paintings, said during an interview about his wo-rk or jotted down in his journal or diary. McComas was an internationally acclaimed landscape painter when he settled down in New Monterey in 1917 with his bride, Gene Baker, whom he met in Xavier Martinez's East Bay studio. The two established studios in the basement of the former home and studio of another artist Charles Dickman. Later, they built a home and studios in Pebble Beach. From the beginning, and even before their marriage, the two were involved with the Monterey Peninsula Bohemian crowd, which Gene McComas insisted was centered in Monterey, not Carmel. Before his marriage, McComas became a friend of the Greek royal family who provided him with a six-man bodyguard so he could paint undisturbed on the streets of Athens. After he and Gene were married, the two artists did a lot of traveling, painting in the Southwestern desert and in Mexico where their friends included Diego Rivera and his wife, Frida Kahlo. One legend about McComas is that in the 1920s, while he was painting a large illustrated map on a wall at Hotel Del Monte, he was arrested in Pacific Grove for being intoxicated and spent a day in jail. His revenge was to purge the name of the city from his map, which shows the communities of Pebble Beach and Monte Rey, but the area between them says Moss Beach. Francis McComas died in 1938. Loesch hasn't given up his search for the context of'.Ihe gi·eatest meeting of land and water in the world," The search has now become part of the history of Point Lobos. , OCR Text: 62001 F4 THE MONTEREY Bonnie ' Gartshore Looking Back 4 4- f.,1 R t. 4 --_ THE McCOMAS QUOTE Editor' s note: The late Bonnie Gartshore wrote a number of columns in advance. In her honor, we will print her columns through the end ofJuly. nhis"MontereyCountyPlace Names: A Geographical Dictionary," Donald Thomas Clark lists Point Inbos as "a . ' magnificent forested, rocky headland marking the S end of Carmel Bay, once described by Francis McComas, the landscape watercolorist, as'the greatest meeting of land and water in the world.'" Kurt Loesch, Point Lobos historian, has been trying to find out how and where McComas voiced this description which, through the years, has been attributed to Robert Inuis Stevenson, Robinson Jeffers and even Henry Miller. The earliest reference to this oft-quoted description that Loesch has been able to find is a 1933 state parks booklet written I by Aubrey Drary. And it turned I up again in the July 1938 issue of American Forests. But in neither place does it say that the description had been written as part of an exhibition of McComas' paintings, said during an interview about his wo-rk or jotted down in his journal or diary. McComas was an internationally acclaimed landscape painter when he settled down in New Monterey in 1917 with his bride, Gene Baker, whom he met in Xavier Martinez's East Bay studio. The two established studios in the basement of the former home and studio of another artist Charles Dickman. Later, they built a home and studios in Pebble Beach. From the beginning, and even before their marriage, the two were involved with the Monterey Peninsula Bohemian crowd, which Gene McComas insisted was centered in Monterey, not Carmel. Before his marriage, McComas became a friend of the Greek royal family who provided him with a six-man bodyguard so he could paint undisturbed on the streets of Athens. After he and Gene were married, the two artists did a lot of traveling, painting in the Southwestern desert and in Mexico where their friends included Diego Rivera and his wife, Frida Kahlo. One legend about McComas is that in the 1920s, while he was painting a large illustrated map on a wall at Hotel Del Monte, he was arrested in Pacific Grove for being intoxicated and spent a day in jail. His revenge was to purge the name of the city from his map, which shows the communities of Pebble Beach and Monte Rey, but the area between them says Moss Beach. Francis McComas died in 1938. Loesch hasn't given up his search for the context of'.Ihe gi·eatest meeting of land and water in the world," The search has now become part of the history of Point Lobos. , Heritage Society of Pacific Grove,Historical Collections,Names of People about town,L through M File Names,McComas,MCCOMAS_001.pdf,MCCOMAS_001.pdf 1 Page 1, Tags: MCCOMAS_001.PDF, MCCOMAS_001.pdf 1 Page 1