The Museum’s important collection of early California paintings and works on paper celebrates the Monterey Peninsula’s legacy as an influential art colony. Created from the mid-19th century to the 1940s, the notable holdings include the work of Charles Rollo Peters, E. Charlton Fortune, Gottardo Piazzoni, and Francis McComas, among others. Important gifts from the Ritschel Memorial Trust and the Mr. and Mrs. Justin Dart have solidified the Museum’s standing as the major repository of the works of William F. Ritschel and Armin Hansen – two of the figures who defined California landscape painting.