This month, we consider the similarities
of 17th century Dutch Genre Painting and 20th century California Scene Painting.

In his book, Windows in Time, Mark Hilbert writes that there is an "unmistakable" connection between Dutch genre painting and California scene painting. Mark and Janet Hilbert founded the Hilbert Museum of California Art in Orange, California.

In the 17th century, Dutch artists created portraits, landscapes, and still lifes of every-day Dutch life, giving a rich picture of of Holland during the Dutch Golden Age.

In the 20th century, California Scene Painting did much the same. California Scene painters captured Californians going about their daily lives in the Golden State.

First, we go back over 300 years and consider the Dutch paintings from the Golden Age on view at the Musee de Louvre in Paris. Then we fast-forward to mid 20th century San Francisco and consider California scene painting. The Hilbert Museum of California Arts new exhibition, California Scene Paintings of San Francisco is curated by Gordon McClelland and is on view through April 27.

Although the techniques, styles, and artistic ideas of these two artistic periods are vastly different, they have this in common: they both used painting to effectively capture visually stimulating stories, portraying the incidents, episodes and expressions of the daily life of their times.

The Dutch paintings of the Golden Age are located on the 2nd floor of the Richelieu wing of the Louvre. Its a quieter corner of the Louvre, far from crowding masses capturing a selfie in front of the Mona Lisa. But after gazing at these Dutch paintings, you begin to believe it isn't quiet at all. These paintings of the Dutch Golden Age show 17th century Holland to have been a raucous, expressive and lively world.

These Dutch Golden Age artists made a refreshing turn. Before they came along, art was comparatively stuffy. Paintings were either classical or historical, having little to do with the life and times in which they were created. In comparison, the Dutch genre paintings were new and fresh. They showed contemporary people, living and lively, working, caring for one another, cooking, marketing, playing games of cards, enjoying their pets, playing music, drinking or engaged in the ever- entertaining games of flirtation. Many off these paintings are rich with humor, with grins and expressions of mischief. One can't help but feel invited to step into the scene and share in the goings on.

Below are the works of five Dutch painters on exhibit.

Frans Hals (1582-1666) is known for using loose brushwork, creating lively portraits. Behind these expressive faces are stories. He was one of the earliest of the Dutch Golden Age painters, a generation before Rembrandt and 50 years before Johannes Vermeer. He was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1583 while it was known as the Spanish Netherlands. During the fall of Antwerp, like many others, his family headed North to the new Dutch Republic where Frans remained the rest of his life.

He created both individual and group portraits from a full strata of society. Wikipedia lists his subjects as "portraits of officers, guildsmen, local councilmen from mayors to clerks, itinerant players, singers, gentlemen, fishwives and tavern heros." Often in these works, Hals did not idealize his subjects but allowed their personalities to show, with a wide variety of poses and facial expressions. They had character.

In comparing Hals' paintings with Rembrandt, Hals was a master at capturing a moment in time. His work is unique among the Dutch Golden Age painters. He evoked an emotional response by catching his model's expressions and the light with a few quick and fluid strokes. During his lifetime, his works were popular and he was in demand for commissioned portraits and wedding portraits.

Many of Hals' paintings have disappeared. His long life of 84 years was a blessing and a curse. He lived long enough to see his work go out of favor. At the end of his life, he was left destitute, given an annuity of 200 florins from the Haarlem municipality. It is not known whether he painted any landscapes, still lifes or genre paintings (other than portraits).

Because his portraits captured expressions so well, he has given future generations an insight into the Dutch people, their emotions, their humor and their love of life.

Hals' portraits of the wealthy were commissioned pieces, and had an air of dignity. The Louvre's website states, "Hals' portrayal of 'little people' from the lower classes -- peasants, merry drinkers, or loose women -- obviously did not have the same purpose of social recognition. In fact these pictures, which belong to what are known as genre portraits, were often the means of making a moral judgement on the pleasures of the senses and their attendant dangers. Thus this lutist might well be an allegory of hearing or a lesson about the vanity of music, which by definition is ephemeral."

Over two hundred years after his death, Hals gained a number of posthumous students including Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Charles-Francois Daubigny, Max Liebermann, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and Gustave Courbet. Many of these artists copied Hals paintings to gain insight into his techniques which they incorporated into their own work.

And Vincent Van Gogh, a young Dutch artist living in France, wrote in a letter to his brother Theo, "'What a joy it is to see a Frans Hals, how different it is from the paintings – so many of them – where everything is carefully smoothed out in the same manner." It was clear to Van Gogh that Hals chose not to give a smooth finish to his painting, as most of his contemporaries did, but mimicked the vitality of his subject by using smears, lines, spots, large patches of color and hardly any details.

Gerrit Dou (1613-1675) was a Dutch Golden Age painter known for his genre scenes. A student of Rembrandt van Rijn, he is noted for his candlelight scenes with strong use of light and dark.

He also used a technique using forced perspective, allowing him to create an illusion of his subjects appearing to exist in three dimensions. This technique has a French name (trompe l'oeil) and originated in the Baroque period. Elements of the technique were used in ancient times by Greek and Roman artists. Modern use of this technique is used in films, especially by matte artists.

Dou's father manufactured stained glass. At age 14, his father sent him to the nearby studio of Rembrandt when Rembrandt was just 21 years old. He studied with Rembrandt for three years, learning skills in coloring and using light and dark. Dou's use of color was always fresh and transparent. He is said to have once spent five days painting one hand, and was so demanding of his tools, he found it necessary to manufacture his own brushes.

Optical tools were used too. He often used a concave lens coupled with a concave mirror. He also used a frame criss-crossed with silk threads and held it up looking at his subject. Early in his career, he painted many portraits, but this declined over time, due in part to not being able to find models willing to sit long enough for his extended painting sessions. His pictures were always small.

Dou was successful in his lifetime. He even had a patron who paid him 500 guilders a year simply for the right of first refusal for his latest work. For a time after his death, his paintings remained in demand, but eventually fell into obscurity. His popularity was reestablished recently in the 1970's.

Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667) painted history paintings, still lifes, portraits and genre works. He used a variety of styles and techniques throughout his career, never wedding himself to one niche. At age 19, he was one of the first painters registered in the painter's guild at Leiden. He left their membership less than two years later.

At age 26, he moved to Amsterdam, living next to a brewery and near his relatives. Two years later, Metsu got into an argument with a neighbor.

The neighbor leveled a reputation-killing accusation, saying Metsu left a brothel at six in the morning. The ensuing controversy drove Metsu to move across town on a canal where a daily vegetable market was held. This market was featured in his painting The Herb Market done in 1860. He died young in 1667 at age 38.

It is believed that Metsu studied with Gerrit Dou around 1653. Metsu's work previous to this time shows none of Dou's influence.

Like Dou, he created small works of figures placed in domestic interiors, and genre scenes. His favorite subjects included young women feeding pets or goods being sold in a market. Although Metsu is believed to have an impeccable reputation, some of his genre scenes are suggestive of lewd interpretations.

Pieter de Hooch (1629-1684) is known for genre paintings, quiet domestic scenes with an open doorway. He was a member of the Delft Guild of St. Luke along with fellow painter Johannes Vermeer. He was the son of a bricklayer and a midwife. He worked in Rotterdam, Delft and Amsterdam where he was known for genre paintings of ladies and gentlemen in conversation. His early work included scenes of soldiers and peasants in stables and taverns, showing his skill with light, color and perspective.

At the age 25, he married Jannetje van der Burch and soon had a family with seven children. Now, as a husband and father, he focused on domestic scenes.

His work shows his great skills of observation, detailing everyday life while also telling well-ordered morality tales.

His delicate treatment of light compares well with the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, one of his contemporaries who lived in Delft the same time.

Early on, de Hooch also shared themes and compositions with his close life-long friend, Emanuel de Witte, but beginning in the early 1650's, De Witte became more interested in the vast architectural spaces within churches, both real and imaginary, while de Hooch was more interested in people and their relationships with each other.

As de Hooch's career and affluence advanced, so did the fortunes of the subjects in his paintings. His paintings became pictures of the more well-to-do, residing in interior scenes with designed marble tiled floors, long draperies and high ceilings.

We don't know much of de Hooch's living arrangements in Amsterdam, but it is known that he maintained contact with his friend Emanuel de Witte. In the 1670's, his work deteriorated and became more stylized. It may be that he was distressed due to the death of his wife at the age of 38, leaving him to raise his young family alone. He died in an asylum at the young age of 55.

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) is known for his domestic interior scenes, familiar to him in his middle class life. He was moderately successful, but far from wealthy. He never traveled abroad, and stayed close to home in Delft. When he died tragically at age 43, he left his wife and children in debt, mostly because he had produced only a small number of paintings. He is known to have worked very slowly, creating only about three paintings a year, using expensive pigments to achieve his spectacular lighting effects.

Many of his paintings were done in two small rooms of his house in Delft. Repeatedly, his paintings use the same decorations and furnishings. His subjects were mostly women. Although he was recognized during his lifetime, he fell into obscurity after his death, and wasn't even mentioned in Arnold Houbraken's source book written in 1718 on 17th century Dutch painting. Since the mid 19th century, though, Vermeer's reputation has grown and he is considered today to be one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

As good artists everywhere, the artists of the Dutch Golden age influenced each other. Like Pieter de Hooch and Gabriel Metsu, it is believed that Vermeer was influenced by Gerard Dou's paintings. In turn, Vermeer's treatment of light influenced de Hooch and Metsu.

Vermeer's early death, according to his wife, came from financial distress brought on by a downturn in the economy. 1n 1672, Louis the 14th of France invaded the Dutch Republic during the Franco-Dutch War. Later that year, the English invaded during the Anglo-Dutch war. These events squashed the art market for a while. After his death, in a petition to his creditors, his wife wrote, "... during the ruinous war with France he not only was unable to sell any of his art but also, to his great detriment, was left sitting with the paintings of other masters that he was dealing in."

"As a result and owing to the great burden of his children having no means of his own, he lapsed into such decay and decadence, which he had so taken to heart that, as if he had fallen into a frenzy, in a day and a half he went from being healthy to being dead."

In the 1930's, San Francisco's artists painted its vitality. Building on the works of the Ashcan School painters of New York a generation earlier and Dutch genre painters long before them, California Scene painters took up the challenge and painted stories of San Francisco.

California's artists were drawn to San Francisco scenery and sense of vitality. The Hilbert Museum's current exhibition, Bay Area Scene Painting curated by Gordon T. McClelland features works by Jade Fon, Ralph Hulett, George Post, Dong Kingman, Jack Laycox, Sun Ying, Ken Potter, Lee Blair, Sung Yangchareon and others.

Just twenty years after California became a state, Joseph Lee created , A View of Fort Point, Golden Gate, San Francisco in 1870. This painting filled with incredible detail gives us a glimpse of San Francisco, already a major port city more than a half century before the 1930's. It makes us wonder what people were thinking in 1870. Did people back then dare to envision a bridge across the Golden Gate?

Fifty-seven years after Joseph Lee painted the Golden Gate, Jay Morse painted The Bridge Builders. The cities of Crocket with Vallejo would now be connected with the Carquinez Bridge. The plan was to connect Sacramento with San Francisco. The Carquinez Bridge was soon followed by the Bay Bridge opened in 1936 and the Golden Gate in 1937.

Milford Zornes has long been a favorite of Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery. His paintings are included in our collection, and we've attended two dedicated exhibitions of his work and other exhibitions which included his paintings. He lived to be 100 years old, and was a successful watercolorist throughout his long life. He often told his many students that the horizontal line in a painting is the plot line and the vertical lines are the chapters. He made his reputation in the depression and was highly successful in the 1930's and beyond.

In San Francisco Cable Car, he shows a thriving city, people on the move, appearing like jazzy musical notes on a staff, flowing through busy lives while the rattling cable car moves on.

Emil Kosa Jr. was a well known California scene watercolorist. For his day job, he was an artist for 20th Century Fox's special effects department for over 30 years, creating matte paintings and photographic effects for many of Hollywood's legendary films, such as Planet of the Apes, Doctor Dolittle, The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, In Like Flint, The Sand Pebbles, Fantastic Voyage, Stagecoach, The Agony and the Ecstasy, The Sound of Music, and South Pacific.

He won an Oscar for matte art used in 1963's Cleopatra. In many ways, Kosa's movie career was much like Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery's featured artist, Joshua Meador. Meador served as Director of Animation Effects at Walt Disney Studios.

During the 1940's, Emil Kosa Jr.'s and Joshua Meador's paintings were represented by Maxwell Galleries in San Francisco. During those years, both artists came and painted in Northern California many times, recording its unique scenery and capturing its light and energy. The view in Emil Kosa Jr.'s San Francisco is looking down a hillside from Coit Tower.

Dong Kingman's watercolors are distinguishable from many of his peers. He worked in New York and San Francisco, and had some success in Hollywood too. The opening credits of Charton Heston's 55 Days at Peking and the films The Sand Pebbles and Flower Drum Song all include a series of watercolors by Kingman in their opening credits. (See our newsletter article from September, 2014.)

Dong Kingman, like Milford Zornes, became successful in the 1930's as a WPA artist, with his work recognized by Eleanor Roosevelt. He received a Guggenheim fellowship, became an artist for the U.S. Army during WWII, and taught at Columbia University.

In Kingman's Black Cat Cafe, he pays tribute to San Francisco's Bohemian artistic culture. Similar to its namesake, the Chat Noir in Paris, home to Toulouse-Lautrec, Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, and Paul Signac, San Francisco's Black Cat Cafe was a home for all kinds of locals, from longshoremen to musicians, artists and beat poets. The San Francisco Chronicle's columnist Herb Caen often spoke of the Black Cat Cafe, a local color hangout for luminaries such as John Steinbeck, Maynard Dixon,

Bette Davis or Gene Kelly. Like many of San Francisco's artists, Dong Kingman exhibited some his paintings on the Black Cat's walls.

As a artist, Kingman was trained in what he called, "Oriental and Occidental" styles of watercolor painting. He often combined elements of each, giving his paintings of western San Francisco a touch of eastern flavor.

In San Francisco Bay, Kingman creates an amalgam of The City, dockside and bay scenes melded and illuminated by sun rays piercing through a gap in the fog. This isn't so much a picture of the City as it is a picture of San Francisco's

bustling activity, the pulse of the thriving port city, culturally rich and vibrantly diverse.

Louis Macouillard was born in San Francisco. He spent some time in New York studying at the Art Student's League, but returned to the Bay Area to pursue a career in graphic arts. In the 1930's, he was art director for the

Velvetone Poster Company while creating many watercolors of San Francisco scenes. During WWII, he was a Navy artists stationed in the South Pacific. His war work was featured in the October 1943 issue of Life Magazine. Other of his achievements include artwork for two U.S. postage stamps, one of Daniel Boone.

View of San Francisco shows the city by the Bay, rising high and spanning it influence eastward. The aircraft carrier headed toward docking shows the Navy's strong connections with the City, and the City's pride in helping to win WWII.

Ralph Hulett was a frequent visitor to San Francisco and Northern California. A graduate of the Chouinard Art Institute, he went to work as an animator for Walt Disney Studios. At Disney, Hulett distinquished himself, making major contrituions for films including Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmations and The Jungle Book.

While working on these and other Disney projects, he became a close friend of his co-worker, Disney's Director of Animation Effects, Joshua Meador. On numerous occasions, Hulett, his wife and sons Steve and Ralph would accompany Joshua Meador and his wife Libby and son Phil on their excursions to Northern California. Ralph and Joshua often painted together and exhibited their paintings in the same Northern California galleries.

Ralph was born just south of Chicago in Kankakee in, Illinois in 1915. He moved to California where he earned a scholarship to the Chouinard Art Institute. This scene, Downtown San Francisco, captures some of the visual magic of the interface between the City and the Bay.

George Post is perhaps best known of all Northern California watercolor painters. His inclusion of geometrically abstract shapes allowed

for the participation of his work in more progressive art shows, but recognizable and pleasing enough to be included with traditionalists. Although appearing simple in design, his paintings are masterfully composed, showing sophisticated use of light and shadow.

Both From Rincon Hill and San Francisco North to the Embarcadero are examples of Post's use of exaggerated geometrical shapes and planes, giving a sense of San Francisco's Hills. These views of the city and the Bay are given a perspective from above, giving a sense of the vertical dimension of the City and its spectacular views of the busy Bay.

This Hilbert Museum's exhibition has many more paintings by George Post. Curator Gordon McClelland has long wanted to pull together a number of Post's paintings for such an exhibition. The George Post section of the exhibition includes many photos of George Post in the process of painting.

Jade Fon was a gifted San Francisco painter and personality. He was born in San Jose, but his family moved when he was a child. He grew up in Winslow, Arizona. His first job was in his uncle's Chinese restaurant.

But when he grew to be of sufficient age, he moved to Los Angeles. His artistic skills gained him employment in films as a scenic artist. He worked on 1939's Gone With the Wind.

In the 1940's during a film artists strike, he moved on to San Francisco. In short order, he established himself as a successful painter, and to help pay the bills, he was a singer and emcee at the Forbidden City night club.

While working at Forbidden City, he painted patrons and entertainers. But the smoke filled atmosphere aggravated his asthma, necessitating a move to a new career.

He began teaching watercolor painting at Diablo Valley College and soon moved to the East Bay near Martinez. During the summers, he began a series of well known and successful watercolor painting workshops which met at the Asilomar Conference Grounds between Monterey and Carmel.

His paintings of San Francisco speak to hilly geography, the gritty side of a working city amid natural and architectural beauty, many including a nod to San Francisco's rich Chinese heritage.

Jack Laycox grew up in Northern California. In his day job, he produced technical illustrations for the Atomic Energy Commission and created commercial illustrations for the Donald Art Company. As an artist, he produced many fine watercolor paintings and taught art. He exhibited with the American Watercolor Society and Northern California art club exhibitions and shows. Today, his night scenes such as Cable Car Ride and Evening on the San Francisco Embarcadero (pictured at the top of this art article) are in high demand.

Jack broke a rule known among watercolor painters. He used black paint. He flooded his paper with water before beginning. It could have been a real mess, but Laycox managed it to great effect, creating colorful images with soft edges.

A teen-aged Ken Potter visited the 1939 World's Fair on Treasure Island and had his first encounter with some of the world's great art. He was hooked. As a youth wandering about San Francisco on Cable Car and on foot, Ken Potter scouted scenic locations.

After serving in WWII, Ken Potter was taught geometric abstractionist ideas while studying art in San Francisco under the GI Bill. He also attended art presentations by master painters Dong Kingman and Milford Zornes. He continued his studies in Italy and France, with studies in fresco painting and cubism.

By the 1950's, Ken had one-man shows in Paris, San Francisco, and Rio de Janeiro.

After brief stays in New York and Rio, he returned to San Francisco, settling into a flat in North Beach, the center of San Francisco's Bohemian life. He counted artists, poets and jazz musicians among his friends. He was prolific and painted daily. View of Alcatraz shows a view not seen by most tourists, and may have been a location he had scouted in his youth. It shows the Bay and Alcatraz through a maze of telephone poles and cables from a location on Russian Hill.

Most of these watercolor artists have impressive and long biographies, but Sun Ying is the exception. Hardly anything is known of him, other than he was born in 1919. We have no death date. If he is still alive, he would be 100 years old this coming year.

He came to San Francisco from China and, although he did landscapes of other areas, is best known for his paintings of San Francisco. Given the subject matter in Washington Park, San Franciscohis sophisticated composition and use of silhouetted figures shows he had associations with more well known artists. His work certainly shows he was a deserving member of the watercolor painting community.

His painting Washington Park, San Francisco shows scurrying pedestrians with umbrellas, as wind bends the palm fronds above them. The use of vertical elements against the horizontal wet pavement below and his use of light and dark is testament to Ying's ability to create a striking and pleasing image. The streaks of rain were created with light blue paint.

Bay Area Scene Painting: curated by Gordon McClelland at the Hilbert Museum of California Art runs through April 27, 2019. It is well worth the trip. The Irvine Museum is currently nearby, featuring older California masters. Both museums can easily be enjoyed in the same day.

Mark and Janet Hilbert have created a wonderful venue for the public. The museum will soon be expanding their space, as a new museum facility is planned. The museum is associated with Chapman University in Orange, California and is a teaching resource for art students and aspiring artists.

In next month's issue, two articles regarding. Paul Gauguin. First, his paintings in the permanent collection at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris
and second, the de Young Museum's current exhibition, Gauguin: A Spiritual Journey, through April 7, 2019.

The de Young's exhibition includes Gauguin paintings, wood carvings, and ceramics from the renowned collections of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. The exhibition explores Gauguin’s inner quests and imaginings - his spiritual journey - and how his intimate relationships with his wife, other artists, and people he encountered shaped his experiences, his work, and his development as an artist.

Beyond Linda's studio, her paintings are currently showing at:

Bodega Landmark Gallery Collection,
located in the town of Bodega, west end of town a half block from the Casino, and just across from the General Store and the Bodega Volunteer Fire Department.

Corrick's "Art Trails Gallery,
located in downtown Santa Rosa on 4th Street, just steps from Santa Rosa's reopened Town Square.

6th Street Playhouse, The Red Shoes Gallery
6th Street Playhouse, The Studio Gallery,
52 W. 6th Street, Santa Rosa.

Bentonville, AR
Crystal Bridges
Museum of American Art

... IN GRATON, CA ...
Linda Sorensen's studio and Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery's showroom is now located in Atelier One, Graton. You may view all paintings in Linda Sorensen's or Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery's online offerings. Call or email for an appointment.

... IN YOUR HOME ... Call or email for a an appointment. If appropriate, we'll bring the art to you (up to 200 miles from Bodega Bay).

... ON LINE ... Call or email about pieces which interest you. We offer FedEx shipping (included in price) in the U.S. for major purchases.