Helen Bruton’s “The Party”

The Party by Helen Bruton
https://rlsclubmonterey.org/the-party/

The three Bruton sisters were part of a vibrant, if loosely knit, artistic community that was known as “The Monterey Group,” which also included Armin Hansen, August Gay, C. S. Price, Lucy Valentine Pierce, Jeanette Maxfield Lewis, Paul Whitman, Myron Oliver, Ina Perham (Story), and Robert V. Howard. One of the members of the Monterey Group, August Gay (1890-1948), was also part of another art community based in Oakland, California, known as the “Society of Six”; these painters frequently traveled to the Monterey Peninsula to paint. Gay became so infatuated with the area that he decided to settle there permanently around 1922, the same time as Margaret Bruton arrived. In Monterey, Gay lived with artist C.S. Price (1874-1950); they rented rooms at the old French Hotel in downtown Monterey. The hotel was popularly known as the Stevenson House, because Robert Louis Stevenson stayed there for a few months in 1879 while recovering from an illness and courting his future wife, Fanny Osbourne.  

The Stevenson House became a gathering place for artists and was known for its wild parties. Margaret Bruton later described the atmosphere there:

Lots of people would come down from the city [San Francisco]... Rooms could be opened into each other and to the outside. [The building] was lovely because it wasn't all titillated up the way it is now, with gardens and landscaping.  There was just lots of sun, lots of old nets, and five or ten dollars a month rent for rooms. Originally fishermen and artists had lived there side by side, but gradually the artists took over.¹

Helen Bruton created an etching entitled The Party (ca. 1925), which depicts a lively social gathering at the Stevenson House; pictured in the work are C.S. Price and Ina Perham embracing on a bench, August Gay attending the record player, and the three Bruton sisters dancing, each with a different partner. This work has become locally famous for illustrating the wild parties of the young Bohemians living in Monterey in the 1920s. The Party was awarded first prize at the California Society of Etchers exhibit in September 1928. 

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¹Quoted from Nancy Boas. The Society of Six: California Colorists. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 136.