Sotoyome mural goes from market to Healdsburg Museum

It has endured a recent accidental stabbing by a forklift truck and past piercings by multiple bullets as well as caking from the mud of floodwaters. But now, a painting of the Sotoyome Market that hung there from 1878 until the market closed in the 1960s is happily installed at the Healdsburg Museum.

Community donations to restore the 14- by 5-foot sign met a challenge proposed by Museum Curator Holly Hoods in 2012. She displayed the work in that year’s “Healdsburg’s Artistic Heritage” exhibit. The mural-sized painting shows the name of the store over a scene depicting a steer, sailing ships, a horse-drawn buggy and a large house and barn.

The painting was commissioned by market owner John D. Hassett and was painted by local artist William Monmonier. Myra Hoefer spied it at a corner antiques store in the 1970s and purchased it for her husband, Billy Pearson, an art collector and jockey.

The couple divorced in the late 1970s, though, and he donated the painting to the Healdsburg Museum, which stored it for a time at the city corporation yard and then at the Dry Creek barn of Jim and Barbara Fagan.

Conservation Art Service Director and Chief Conservator Niccolo Caldararo, who has advised the museum since the early 1990s, provided a restoration plan for the painting. Cleaning and stabilizing would amount to $6,000, while the repair of the gashes and “inpainting” would require an additional $2,000.

Initial funding was provided by Bob Rawlins, who donated $5,000 to kick off a donation drive in January 2012. By 2013, the museum had raised enough money for the first phase of the work, which was completed in August 2014. The second part of the restoration, the “inpainting” or reconstruction of the missing or deteriorated image, was finished early this year.

“Sotoyome Market” now hangs over the stairwell at the museum, 221 Matheson St., and is on permanent display. Hours are 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, 431-3325, healdsburgmuseum.org.