17th century Scottish painter William Gouw Ferguson (1632-1689) lived and painted in Holland where he was known for his decorative still lifes of game. Six Butterflies and a Moth on a Rose Branch departs from his normal subject matter, but is most pleasing.

Sir Henry Raeburn (1756-1823) was Scotland's first significant portrait artist. His Reverend Robert Walking Skating on Duddingston Loch is one of Scotland's most famous and best loved paintings. The good Reverend had learned to skate on the canals of the Netherlands, and came to Scotland at the age of 15. He married a Scottish woman, Jean Fraser, in 1778 and had five children. He was a member of the Royal Company of Archers and served as their chaplain. While minister of Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh, he also served as president of the Edinburgh Skating Club.

Sir David Wilkie (1785-1841) lived in London and loved to travel. The Letter of Introduction by Sir David Wilke is partially autobiographical. In 1805, David Wilkie moved to London carrying a letter of introduction to the elderly connoisseur Caleb Whitefoord at the Royal Academy.

Sir William Allen sat for this portrait by William Nicholson while wearing a Circassian quilted jacket which he wore as a painting smock. Allen was a friend and former student of Sir David Wilkie. In promoting himself, he carved out an artistic identity by wearing his Circassian jacket, referring to his time spent in Russia. He was there to seek out portrait commissions through the Tzar's Scottish physician. While in Russia, he visited Odessa and the Caucasus Mountain region. There he collected arms, armour and costumes from the region. He considered himself an orientalist, often creating paintings with Circassian themes.

A Lady in Grey was done by Sir Daniel Macnee, Scotland's leading portrait painter in the mid 19th century. The model of this painting is believed to be Daniel Macnee's daughter, Isabella Wiseman. Two years earlier, Macnee did a portrait of the famous actress Nelly O'Brien which won high praise and fame. A Lady in Grey has a similar pose and lighting effects.

Princes Street with the Commencement of the Building of the Royal Institution celebrates the transformation of Edinburgh and its burgeoning cultural life. Today, Scots look at this scene with pride. Sir Robert Wilkie considered Alexander Nasmyth to be the founder of landscape painting in Scotland. Nasmyth was fascinated by architecture, landscape design and civil engineering.

Joseph Farquharson was both a painter and the Laird of Finzean in Aberdeeshire. His wooded estate inspired many snowy landscapes for which he is renowned. Unlike Winter Day Finzean, many of his paintings featured snowy pastures with sheep, earning him the nickname "Frozen Mutton Farquharson."

William Hogarth (1697-1764) was a a satirist, social critic and cartoonist. But as a painter and printmaker, he was well positioned to express and distribute his satire and social critique to a wide audience. One of his best series was Marriage a-la-mode, on display at the National Gallery in London. Portrait of Sarah Malcolm may have reached a new low for artists seeking models for portraits, but Hogarth couldn't resist this sensational story. Poor Sarah sat for this portrait in Newgate Prison just two days before she was hanged in 1733. She was convicted for assisting two fellow servants murder her mistress Lydia Duncombe.

Thomas Gainsborough (1827-1888) preferred painting landscapes over portraits, but was England's dominant portraitist during the last half of the 18th century. His famous portrait The Blue Boy is in the Huntington Collection in Southern

California. His landscapes are loved for their light palette and easy strokes. River Landscape with a View of a Distant Village is believed to be one of several commissioned decorative paintings meant to be hung over mantelpieces.

In The Vale of Dedham, Constable celebrates a scene from his youth, the River Stour and the Church in Dedham. Constable's father worked at a water mill on the river.

Sir Edwin Landseer (1802-1873) is best known for his paintings of animals, especially horses, dogs and stags. He was also a sculptor and created the Lions so famously residing in London's Trafalgar Square. He was loved across class lines, with prints of his work commonly displayed in middle class homes. The Monarch of the Glen is one of the most famous paintings of the 19th century, encapsulating the grandeur of Scotland's highlands and its wildlife. Originally planned as part of a series for the House of Lords, it was sold privately. Prints were very popular, and in the 20th century, the image was used in marketing of various products such as The Hartford insurance.

In the 17th century, the Dutch Republic was not only the center of the art world, it was the geopolitical center of Europe, its leader in both trade and science. The National Gallery of Scotland has a rich collection of paintings from the Dutch Golden Age.

Rembrandt Van Rijn (1606-1669), considered one of history's greatest painters is best known for his portraits, self portraits and Bible scenes. He never traveled outside of Holland, but was considerably influenced by the Italian old masters, through the painters from the Netherlands who had studied in Italy, such as Peter Paul Ruebens. Rembrandt created many self portraits, giving us a visual record of his appearance as he aged. This Self Portrait was believed to have been done in 1657 when Rembrandt was 50 years old. It was a rough period in his life as he had been declared bankrupt and had to auction his house, his art collection and studio furnishings.

Pieter Jansz Saenredam (1597-1665) was a contemporary of Rembrandt. Saenredam is known for his paintings of the clean white interiors of Dutch church interiors. After the Dutch Revolt lead by Protestants, highly decorated Catholic churches were stripped of their ornamentation. The Interior of St. Bravo's Church, Haarlem is the largest surviving work by Saenredam, and is also where he was buried.

Peter Paul Ruebens (1577-1640) studied in Italy beginning in 1600. His visit to Venice, viewing paintings by Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto, and later in Florence and Rome, he was influenced by the work of Michalangelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Caravaggio. A Study of a Head, St. Ambrose was done as Ruebens prepared his painting St. Ambrose Barring Emperor Theodosius from Milan Cathedral. Ambrose was a 4th century Bishop of Milan. Ruebens kept such studies in his studio and re-used them for other paintings.

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) is known for his interior scenes of middle-class Dutch life. He was only moderately successful in his brief life time (43 years), but is

today revered as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. He was known to have been painfully slow in producing a painting and used very expensive pigments. Only thirty-six of his paintings survive today, and Christ in the House of Mary and Martha is his only painting of a Biblical scene.

Gebrand Van Der Eeckout (1621-1674) was a student of Rembrandt, and assumed his manner, allowing for confusion among some experts as to the attribution of some of his paintings. He is best known for his portraits, but also created genre and Biblical scenes. A guardroom Interior was one of several scenes of guardrooms done by Eeckhout, suggesting it is a scene frequent and familiar to him or a scene of backroom interest. The superb coloring of this painting stands out, especially the shades of green in the young woman's dress.

Rembrandt Van Rijn's Hanna and Samuel is thought to show Hannah teaching her son, but some believe it to be Hanna at the scene of Christ's presentation at the Temple. It is possible this painting was begun by one of Rembrandt's students, Van Hooogstraten or Abraham van Dijck.

Pieter De Hooch (1629-1684) was a contemporary of Johannes Vermeer, and like Vermeer, a member of the Delft Guild of St. Luke. He is known for his genre paintings of quiet domestic scenes, often with an open doorway. The Disputed Reckoning with its ceiling beams and geometric floor along with vertical lines of the curtains give the painting a kind of shadow box effect, popular among art buyers at the time. The comic scene shows a the woman, a tavern host, holding a coin too small to cover the gentleman's bill.

Jan van der Heyden (1637-1684) specialized in townscapes and was a leading architectural painters of the Dutch Golden Age. He was also an engineer and inventor. He designed a street lighting system for Amsterdam and even became the city's street light director. A View of Cologne with the Carthusian Church and St. Pantaleon was done while visiting Cologne, Germany.

Aert Van Der Neer (1603-1677) specialized in night scenes of snowy moonlit or firelit landscapes, often with rivers or canals. Unable to support his family from his art career, he was a tavern owner in Kalverstraat. He died in poverty. Frozen River Landscape captures a panorama of an early winter afternoon, filled with atmospherics and reflection. A Dutch pastime was to spend time on the ice, skating, eating, drinking, playing games or merely conversing.

Entree du bois a Ville d'Avray was a familiar scene for Corot, as his family lived in Avray, just west of Paris. The composition of this painting along with its treatment of light is partially in response to the paintings of John Constable, which Corot had recently seen exhibited in Paris.

Achille-Etna Michallon (1796-1822) died of pneumonia at the age of 25, tragically ending his most promising artistic career. Although disputed, he is believed to have had Corot as one of his pupils. He studied in Italy for two years, a trip which had profound impact on his work. Forest Scene is a strikingly eye catching painting at the National Gallery of Scotland was started outdoors, but probably finished in Michallon's studio.

Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) was a member of the French Impressionists, and is one of "les trois grandes dames" of impressionism along with Marie Brocquemond and Mary Cassatt. She married Eugene Manet, the brother of painter Edouard Matet. Woman and Child in a Garden is believed to show Morisot's daughter with a female nurse. The composition seems to follow the natural focus of the eye, with the center more distinct and more sketch like and indistinct toward the periphery.

Beginning in 1878, Claude Monet (1840-1926) rented a house in Vetheuil on the Seine and lived there three years. The Church at Vetheuil is a view of the house from the West and the 13th century church which dominates the village.

More than half of the paintings ascribed to Edgar Degas (1834-1917) were of dancers. A Group of Dancers is a late work is striking for its acidic colors and experimental technique. His fingerprints are visible in the top of the painting where he manipulated the paint.

Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) was a post-impressionist. His work is highly recognizable by his small repetitive, exploratory brush strokes used to build up planes of color building growing into complex fields. During the last years of his career, he created some experimental pieces focusing on rocks, trees and vegetation. In The Big Trees, areas of unpainted white canvas are crossed by branches of the trees creating a spacial ambiguity, anticipating the experiments of early cubism.

Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940) was a member of the avant-garde group, Le Nabis, including Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, and Paul Serusier. Vuillard painted mostly interiors, streets and gardens. He lived with his mother, a dressmaker, until he was 60 years old. His familiarity with fabrics nurtured in him an obsession with pattern, texture and color. In La Chambre Rose a child (probably his nephew) is almost out of sight while the flowers in the foreground are barely sketched in. Vuillard often left areas of the canvas unpainted so as not to interfer with the effect of the whole.

In the 1570's, Jacopo Zucchi (1540-1596) worked for Cardinal Ferdinando de Medici. The Forge of Vulcan is a classical scene showing Vulcan with his assistants, the Cyclopes, forging weapons for the Gods, with Minerva standing at the right. The diamond at the top of Minerva's shield is an emblem of the Medici family. The piece is thought to have been a bold statement of Medici power.

El Greco (1541-1614) who's real name was Domenikos Theotokopoulos was a painter of the Spanish Renaissance. He was born on Crete and trained in Venice and Rome before moving to Toledo, Spain. El Greco was ahead of his time and wasn't appreciated by his contemporaries, but finally found appreciation in the 20th century. Critics love him for his phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with western painting. The meaning of An Allegory (Fabula) is uncertain. The use of a monkey at the time in a painting represented a the presence of a vice. The boy's act of kindling a flame may allude to the arousal of sensual passions while the grinning observer could represent folly. The message of the painting is guessed to be that lust appeals to the foolish and baser instincts.

Diego Velazqeuez (1599-1660) was the leading artist in the Court of King Phillip IV of Spain, and is one of the most important painters of the Spanish Golden Age. He was known especially for his portraits and was a model for realist and impressionist painters, especially Edouard Manet. Others paying tribute to Velazquez were Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Francis Bacon. In An Old Woman Cooking Eggs is a genre painting. Velazquez liked to use working class characters, often using his family members as models. The old woman cooking the eggs appears to be the same woman in another of Velazquez's paintings, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, 1618.

Frederick Edwin Church (1826-1900) was a Hudson River School artist, known for his landscapes. It is believed that Niagara Falls, from the American Side was done in the 1860's to be shown at the Universal Exhibition in Paris. Church had been chosen to be the representative at the Exhibition.

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was an American portraitist, but lived most of his life in Europe. Lady Agnew of Lochnaw is an imposing portrait. Her direct gaze emphasized by the flowing fabric of her gown and relaxed posture adds to her sense of confidence. This portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1893, and sculptor Rodin described Sargent to be the "Van Dyck of our times."

On pages 4 and 5 of the catalog, you may learn of scheduled Artist Demonstrations.

On pages 22 and 23 of the catalog, you may also choose to visit studios based on the medium of your choice.

You may preview artist works at three locations, the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Corricks on Fourth Street in Downtown Petaluma and Gallery One on Western Avenue in downtown Petaluma.

Below is a sampling of some of the artwork now on display at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts. Drop by and see the show, and make plans to visit the Open Studios of Art @ the Source.

The exhibition includes fifty-five paintings featuring Italian, French, Dutch, English, Scottish and American artists. The Scottish National Gallery was founded in 1850. The Scottish National Portrait Gallery came nearly 40 years later, opening its doors in 1889. The Scottish Gallery of Modern Art opened in 1960. The chronological layout of the exhibition makes it easy for art students, young or old, to appreciate the sequential history of western art. Below is but a sampling of the exhibition with information about each from the exhibition's placards. We highly recommend taking advantage of the opportunity for viewing these often iconic and frequently monumental works in person.

Diego Velazquez was only 18 or 19 when he painted Old Woman Cooking Eggs. It belongs to a group of kitchen and tavern scenes which include familiar scenes with still life elements. The models were probably real people, friends or relatives, who reappear in other paintings by Velazquez.

There are only 36 known paintings of Johannes Vermeer in existence, and Christ in the House of Mary and Martha is his only one illustrating a Biblical subject. Because of its large size, it is believed this painting was intended for a Catholic Church. It shows the story of the dutiful Martha objecting to her sister Mary for listening to Jesus while she tends to the kitchen duties serving the meal.

Thomas Gainsborough is best known for his portraits, but he also enjoyed, over the course of his long career, creating landscapes. He shows a familiarity with the landscapes of 17th century Dutch painters, as many Dutch paintings made their way to London. The wide horizontal dimensions of this painting reflects it was created for a "chimney piece" above a mantel.

Jean-Baptiste Greuze's work was especially admired by the French Enlightenment writer Denis Diderot for combining Rococo style with the morality of neoclassicism. "A Girl with a Dead Canary"was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1865 while Greuze was at the height of his career. This young girl mourning the death of a pet canary would have had a double meaning for 18th century French audiences who would have seen it as a symbolic reference to the loss of virginity.

Sir Henry Raeburn's Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch is one of his best paintings and today is an icon of Scottish culture. Rev. Walker's skating pose resembles the balletic pose of Giambologna's statue of Mercury in Flight. It also illustrates the increasingly popular sport of ice skating among Edinburgh's elite. Reverend Walker was a member of the city's highly selective skating society.

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot linked neoclassical landscape painting with Impressionism. Ville-d'Avray is a village located west of Paris where Corot's parents owned a small country house. In 1850, Entree du bois a Ville-d'Avray was retouched by Corot's friend Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Pena who added the red cap of the woman seated by the side of the road, meant to be a bold complement to the otherwise cool palette.

John Constable said of The Vale of Deadham, "I have painted a large upright landscape, perhaps my best." He was familiar with the grand traditions of European landscape painting from artists and dealers he met early in his career in London. His landscapes of the English countryside are known for their Romantic idealism.

Sir Joseph Noel Paton's The Reconciliation of Titania and Oberon has a companion painting, The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania, both inspired by William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Due to inquisitive fingers wanting to explore minutely executed details, the museum displays this large intricate painting behind glass.

Following an 1842 trip to the Near East, Richard Dadd suffered a mental breakdown, murdered his father, and was committed to a psychiatric institution for the rest of his life. This Portrait of Sir Alexander Morison is of Richard Dadd's doctor Alexander Morison who was also a pioneer in psychiatric medicine. The setting for the portrait was provided by Dr. Morison's daughter. It includes the Morison house in the fishing village of Newhaven, Scotland.

Camille Pissarro is often called the dean of the Impressionists, and was the only artist to show at all eight Impressionist exhibitions. The Marne at Chennevieres was painted while Pissarro rented a house at La Varene-Saint-Hilaire, southeast of Paris located on the Marne River. This painting shows that Pissarro was influenced by the work of Charles Francois Daubigny and Gustave Courbet.

American Frederic Edwin Church created ambitious landscapes of America's great natural wonders. By the middle of the 19th century, Niagara Falls had become a popular tourist destination. In Niagara Falls, the detail of Church's bare limbs of trees in the foreground are strikingly balanced by the sublime handling of the falling water and luminous mist.

Edgar Degas' Portrait of his close friend, Diego Martelli is a view from on high, flattening the composition with his legs is sharp perspective. The asymmetry and cropping of the red slippers shows the influence of Japanese prints.

Behind the sofa is a map of Paris with the Seine recognizable running through the southern neighborhoods of Paris.

Twenty-Seven year old Gertrude Vernon, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, is shown here at a time when she was convalescing from nervous exhaustion. John Singer Sargent was well known for his society portraits, and here he achieves a sense of high glamour for his subject with the hues of fluid brushwork and delicate harmonies of color. It shows both opulence and grace.

Paul Gauguin's Three Tahitians was done during his second trip to Tahiti 1895-1901. This painting may have come from a Tahitian song (translated "The Savage") or it may be a classical theme of Hercules' choice between vice and virtue, as one woman offers a mango (like Eve's apple) while the other wears a wedding ring while holding a bouquet of flowers.

Henri Mattisse wrote Andre Derain inviting him to spend the summer at Collioure, a small port on the Mediterranean near the Spanish border. Derain was impressed by the intense light. He described the

light as "a golden hue that suppressed shadows." Working with Matisse, he forged a new style, later to be known as Fauvism, simplifying his paintings with sensuously expressive powerful color.

By 1912, Pierre Bonnard had abandoned the dark tonalities of his earlier works. He now preferred working with a more vibrant palette of glowing purples, pinks, greens and yellows. Lane at Veernonnet was especially eye catching when seen in person, especially the pinks atop the wall. In 1910, he rented a small half-timbered house called Ma Roulotte (My Caravan) at Vernonnet, a small village on the River Seine in Normandy. He kept returning to this house to paint until 1939.

As a young artist, Francis Campbell Bolleau Cadell was one of four Scottish artists known as the Scottish Colourists. Their group was known for bringing intense Mediterranean hues into Scottish landscapes, still lifes and portraiture. In the 1920's however, Cadell abandoned loose impressionistic soft tones for more geometric compositions, tight, angular and almost two dimensional in effect. The model is one of Cadell's neighbors who often posed for him. Portrait of a Lady in Black shows another of Cadell's paintings in the background.

Linda Sorensen's paintings can now be seen at ...

the Bodega Landmark Gallery Collection,
located inland 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 newly opened town Square.

By June 9: Gourmet Au Bay down on the waterfront. Eastshore to the bottom of the hill, then straight across the intersection, and slightly left over the little bridge.

Linda Sorensen now rents an artist's cabin/studio, located near Monte Rio, overlooking Dutch Bill Creek among redwoods -- near the Russian River. She reports plenty of company from the mallards and mergansers on the Creek. A new series of paintings is in progress.

Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery is not at present a "brick and mortar" storefront gallery. We've moved out and now exist solely as an online gallery. You may make arrangements to view specific artworks by emailing or calling us. Contact us by by phone 707-875-2911 or email us at Art@BodegaBayHeritageGallery.com. We continue to host our website and Linda's site, LindaSorensenPaintings.com, and publish our online newsletter every month.

Pacific Bay Gallery is Bodega Bay's newest gallery featuring the works of Noki Jones. It is located next to The Ren Brown Collection in Bodega Bay. You may remember it as our most recent storefront location ... easily identifiable by Bodega Bay's newest and tallest palm tree. They've made some vast improvements to the property. Stop in and enjoy!

Bentonville, AR
Crystal Bridges
Museum of American Art