Jerry Van Megert: ‘considered the quintessential painter of iconic Pebble Beach, Point Lobos, and the Big Sur coastline.’

Raised in Eastern Kentucky and possessed of a bachelor’s degree in general studies, Vicki Stewart was headed to law school in 1978 when she went out to California to visit family. Inching along the San Francisco Bay Bridge on a blue-sky day, she was filled with a sense that the setting explained everything she’d been longing for in life. Instead of passing the bar, she took a job tending bar at The Cliff House.

Perhaps it was her subsequent jobs, as a travel agent and then a meeting coordinator, that led her boss at Bechtel Corporation to believe Stewart would make a good travel assistant. She thought so, too.

Stewart’s first Bechtel assignment, in 1998, was to come down to Pebble Beach to oversee the upgrade of the villa he’d purchased on 17 Mile Drive. She did just fine navigating her way to the Peninsula, until she entered the Del Monte Forest. In the dark. She called the caretaker, who was living in an oceanfront cottage on the property, and asked for assistance. He came to her rescue.

A Jerry Van Megert acrylic of China Cove. (Courtesy image)

Stewart noticed the caretaker’s impeccable manners, the mirth in his eyes. She found him humble and rather shy. As she began working on the main house, he popped in and said, “Would you care to join me for dinner? I’ve fixed a chicken.” They became fast friends.

The “caretaker” was a young, fine-art painter, who had been living in the cottage since 1968, as a courtesy of the Bechtel family, after meeting at an art show. Although the artist was not yet well known, the promise of an exceptional career was emerging across each canvas he painted, typically the seascape as it shifted by the hour, outside his door. Bechtel CEO and Chairman Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr. had extended his hand and offered him a six-month stay.

Six months grew to 50 years as an “artist in residence,” all on the promise of a handshake.

The artist, who became what Stewart described as a “favorite beloved cousin, a confidante, traveling companion, best friend,” also went on to become what the world described as “an exceptional landscape, seascape, and portrait artist of international renown.”

Jerry Van Megert, who signed his acrylic paintings “Van Megert,” completed his first painting when he was 6 years old, at his family home, on a farm in Salem, Oregon. He knew himself an artist in that moment and that he would paint, every day, for the rest of his life. He nearly did. After a brief journey through pancreatic cancer, Van Megert died on June 7. He was 86.

Finding and painting his perfect place

Van Megert was, essentially, a self-taught artist, relying on an alchemy of natural talent and the ability to see beyond his subject to the sense of it. He knew, intuitively, how to paint emotion. When he was 20, he received an art scholarship to Willamette University, a private liberal arts college in Salem, Oregon.

For two years, he painted under the auspices of visiting art professor Carl Hill, whose work he had admired since childhood. During their work together, Van Megert learned the fundamentals of painting, which would elevate his work. He also realized he’d rather spend his time painting, than taking core classes that would lead to a degree.

Van Megert returned home, where he continued to paint in a studio on his father’s farm, until the art collector community began to take notice of his work. Deciding it was time to move out on his own, he decided to explore the art communities of California.

“Realizing there was no way to make a living in Salem as an artist,” he often said, “I began exploring the West Coast art colonies in California, such as Mendocino, Laguna Beach and La Jolla, before ending up in Carmel. I was captivated by the ever-mesmerizing vistas of sea and sky surrounding me. Everywhere I looked, I saw a painting and immediately fell in love with the Monterey Peninsula.”

This is the setting in which he made his home and his career.

Van Megert joined the Carmel Art Association in 1970 and quickly began to build a cadre of collectors and his renown. He took to identifying his paintings with his trademark vertical signature.

“When I paint,” he often said, “I don’t think of my work as being special. I got over that years ago. It is the seascape or the particular person whose portrait I’m painting that I find so spectacular.”

Van Megert could portray the same setting over and over, and never create the same painting. From moment to moment, it offered him a new scene, a different story.

“I learned that rather than looking back at my last painting of the setting,” he said, “I should go back to the subject and see it in a different light and mood.”

This also could have been said of the people who became the subjects of his portraiture, for which he became known for perceiving and then painting, not just how the person looked but who they were. He portrayed, among many others, his mother, various children, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Sam Morse, Gerald Ford, George Shultz, himself, and a cadre of collectors visiting the Bechtel estate.

“To have a portrait painted,” Van Megert said, “whether it be a loved one or a corporate president, it is the highest form of respect we can give someone. Our façade represents everything our inner self is and does, and should be honored for that reason.”

Very few places could lure Van Megert off the Peninsula. One was Oregon, where his roots ran deep. Another was the Bohemian Grove, a 160-acre encampment of old-growth redwoods in Northern California, which houses members of this gentlemen’s social club for an annual two-week summer retreat, welcoming some of the most prominent men in the world. Yet, his heart belonged to the City of Light. And Paris welcomed him and his companion, Vicki Stewart, annually for more than 30 years.

Invariably, he would paint—the Seine, the café, the Eifel Tower, the cobbled street, the couple, and the lady in red: Stewart.

“I’ll always remember quietly imploring Jerry to get a picture of ‘that Frenchman in the blue beret,’” Stewart said. “It was so classic, but he was unwilling. Finally, he relented, and that Frenchman showed up like a surprise Easter egg in many of Jerry’s French paintings to come.”

Van Megert relinquished his home by the sea in 2018 and moved into The Park Lane in Monterey, where he continued to paint, daily, as he had every day of his life, until just last year. This past November, the Carmel Art Association (CAA) hosted a retrospective exhibition of his work, which included a book of his Pebble Beach landscapes, published in 1999.

“Jerry so deeply wanted to share one more show of his work,” Stewart said. “He lived for that and he was in attendance, thoroughly enjoying the evening and his community.”

The CAA has created a special archival collection to preserve Van Megert’s work.

“Jerry was the very definition of ‘gentleman’— courteous, honorable, gracious and, quite literally, gentle,” said CAA Archivist Sally Aberg. “He was so modest about his success as an artist, that one could not believe he even knew he was considered the quintessential painter of iconic Pebble Beach, Point Lobos, and the Big Sur coastline.”

Donations in honor and memory of Jerry Van Megert can be made to the Carmel Art Association via PO Box 2271, Carmel-by-the-Sea, 93921, or by calling (831) 250-3347.