Mignon Skalagard, promoter of arts and charitable causes, dies at 91

Gracious and grand and genuinely intrigued by people, Mignon Skalagard performed for years as one of the leading ladies in the society, philanthropy and art circles of Monterey County.

For far longer, she was the partner and chief promoter of Hans Skalagard, the former career seaman and widely admired maritime painter. The two of them operated, quite successfully, Skalagards’s Square-Rigger Art Gallery in Carmel for more than three decades. It came to deal only in Hans Skalagard’s historically accurate paintings of sailing ships.

The Skalagards closed the gallery in 1997, when both were in their 70s, left Monterey County and settled onto a former Petaluma chicken ranch that had been in Mignon Skalagard’s family since the 1940s.

She died there Monday night in the company of her husband, daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She was 91.

“She was a pistol,” Hans Skalagard said.

Mignon Diana Haack was born in Marion, Ore., and named after the opera by Ambroise Thomas. She was 6 when her family relocated to San Francisco. She graduated from Lowell High and went to work as a waitress, singer and Little Shoebox Theater actress.

“She sang torch songs at nightclubs,” said daughter Karen Sikes of Petaluma. As a young woman Mignon Haack also performed with Hall March, who’d go onto TV and the game show, “The $64,000 Question.”

She was 30 when she met Scandinavian sailor Hans Skalagard, who was sojourning in San Francisco and adjusting to land legs between voyages. Born in the North Atlantic’s Faroe Islands, he’d gone to sea on a square-rigged bark at age 13 and taken up painting while serving as a merchant mariner in World War II.

The couple married in San Francisco on a Thursday in 1955; the bride would not hear of the advantages of putting the nuptials off until Friday. “She refused to be married on April Fool’s Day,” her daughter said.

The Skalagards’ 60th anniversary would have been March 31.

Hans Skalagard recalled, “The first 10 years of marriage, you know, I was at sea.” Each time he left on another voyage, his wife would see him off at the docks.

Mignon Skalagard went into real-estate sales in San Francisco, a line of work that allowed her the freedom to follow her curiosity and social nature to myriad other pursuits.

Her husband was still working and painting canvases aboard cargo vessels when, in the mid 1960s, she spotted an empty storefront while visiting Carmel. “She went in and rented it, right then and there,” daughter Sikes said.

Mignon Skalagard noted in a 2010 interview with The Press Democrat, “Actually, Clint Eastwood had a little office right next door.”

The Skalagards made an art gallery of the space. Originally they exhibited pieces from several artists, but they came to see that only those by Hans Skalagard - most them oils of sailing ships slicing through waves and foam - were selling. The gallery switched to carrying his works only.

A short while later, in 1968, Hans Skalagard retired as a merchant sailor. He set roots in Carmel and added steam to his already prolific production of maritime paintings, many of them commanding large canvases.

While greeting visitors, selling art and hosting parties at the gallery, Mignon Skalagard also directed considerable energy and creativity to organizations such as the Monterey Civic Club, Sons of Norway, Quota Club of Monterey-Pacific Grove, the Navy League and the Monterey History and Art Association.

Her husband and daughter said that at meetings and other group functions she never sat quietly in the back.

“She was a busy one,” Hans Skalagard said. “She was what they called a catalyst,”

Nodding, his daughter interjected, “She was a director, that’s for sure.”

Among her initiatives: she persuaded prominent artists to donate paintings of California adobes to adorn the walls of the House of Four Winds, the adobe that the Monterey Civic Club purchased as its clubhouse in 1914.

The Skalagards both were approaching their mid-70s when they closed the Carmel gallery and moved to the family property north of Petaluma that had been familiar to Mignon since well before she met Hans. She joined the Petaluma Woman’s Club and continued to promote her husband’s art. To this day, he paints nearly every morning.

Since she suffered a major heart attack in January 2014, Mignon Skalagard spent most of her time in a bed in the living room, its walls covered nearly every inch by her husband’s renditions of many of history’s seagoing vessels.

“She was happy,” her daughter said. “She’s been able to look at all of her beautiful paintings.”

In addition to her husband and daughter, Mignon Skalagard is survived by three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

A celebration of her life will be at 2 p.m. March 28 at the Petaluma Woman’s Club.