Fifty years ago, Bill and Jennifer Hill were a young married couple with a baby on the way taking a chance on opening their own art gallery in Carmel-by-the-Sea.
Bill had discovered the charm of Carmel in the 1960s, when his older brother was stationed at Fort Ord and invited him to visit from Illinois and get out of the snow. Bill attended Monterey Peninsula College before heading back to Illinois to finish his college degree, but he and Jennifer visited Carmel as often as possible. Like his brother, Bill went on to serve in the army. After his service and receiving an MBA, the couple decided to try to make Carmel home.
“I had asked Jennifer, ‘What am I going to do, sell seashells?'” Bill recalls at his prospects. But Jennifer encouraged him to meet with a headhunter and he unexpectedly found a job at an art gallery, and they settled in town.
“I loved it,” Bill recalls. “I didn’t realize I was visual. I was selling paintings extremely well. The owner got a little jealous, I think. After six months, I decided I would love to start my own little gallery.”
Taking a lease inside a courtyard in an upstairs location in 1974, “couldn’t have been a worse location,” Bill says. “It was amazing we were able to do well enough to keep it going.”
Representing master painter DeWitt Whistler Jayne, a distant cousin to famous artist James McNeill Whistler, was a coup for the young couple, who were in their 20s and learning how to run a business and work with artists. Jayne, also a master professor of art, would come to Carmel monthly and teach Bill about technique.
After five years, the Hills found a more prominent location for the gallery on 6th Avenue, and then in 1985, 11 years after first opening and with Jennifer expecting their second child, New Masters Gallery moved to its third and current location on Dolores Street.
“We gutted what was then The Wooden Nickel and rebuilt the interior,” Bill says. “Right next door was another gallery that had been the old Carmel Hardware store, and they wanted out. I spoke to my business advisor and asked him if I could get the building and he said, ‘I don’t think you want to do that. You just spent all that money on the renovation.’ I went against his wishes and leased it.”
An engineering feat, Bill had his contractors knock out the wall between the buildings to create the 4,500-square-foot space.
“It made all the difference,” he says. “We weren’t long and narrow but more square.”
During the slow month of December, the couple partnered with artist Will Bullas, known for his whimsical animal art, and had a show for him, giving everyone who brought an unwrapped toy a free Bullas print.
“The show grew to where it was so big, people would line up all the way around the gallery,” Bill says. “Will would sign a print and he would also sell out of all the paintings in his show. We probably had up to 3,000 gifts for children piled up against every wall of the gallery.”
Tragically, Bill lost Jennifer to cancer in 2006. “She was president of the Carmel Business Association and started the Carmel Gallery Walk and the Carmel Art Festival,” Bill says. “She was wonderful. The entire Carmel Mission was full at her funeral.”
Then in 2015, a fire of unknown origin hit the gallery one day in the early hours before dawn, causing paintings to be lost and smoke damage to much of the remaining art. Locals helped by running paintings out of the gallery during the fire. Bill was able to move into a temporary space during the year it took to rebuild the gallery and restore the artwork.
Despite the tragedies, Bill’s love for working with people and for art persevered.
“I’m sort of shocked that I’ve been here this long and that I still enjoy it,” he says.
New Masters Gallery represents a diverse collection of painters, sculptors and other artists, like Jean Charles Spindler, who uses the technique of marquetry to piece together hand-cut wood into stunning images.
“He’s the best in the world,” Bill says. “His grandfather started his workshop in the 1800s in France. There’s a 10-foot by 6-foot work of a castle in Bavaria that just pulls people into the gallery. They are amazed by it.”
Other artists include Stephen Pan, who has been represented at the gallery for a quarter century and is known for his luminous paintings of ballerinas with ethereal tutus that appear translucent on the canvas.
“It’s museum quality,” Bill says. “It’s just technically superb.”
Painter Thalia Stratton is known for her restaurant interiors, some of them from Carmel eateries. She captures scenes in a mesmerizing manner. Local artist Merry Kohn Buvia is a naive painter inspired by the animals at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
“It’s very satisfying to have all the wonderful relationships with so many artists and clients,” Bill says. “I have been doing this for so long that primarily I choose by quality, not subject matter or medium. I know artists all over the world and thankfully they know the gallery.”
New Masters Gallery is located on Dolores Street between Ocean and 7th in Carmel.
For more information, call 831/625-1511 or visit www.newmastersgallery.com.