More About Pieter Janszoon Quast

Pieter Jansz. Quast
Self Portrait, c. 1635
oil on panel, 14 x 13 cm
Private Collection,
Münster, Germany

Pieter Janszoon Quast, born in 1605 or 1606, was a painter and engraver who spent most of his life in Amsterdam and The Hague.

According to the marriage banns published on 29 June 1632, Quast was betrothed to Annetje Splinters while he was living in the Molensteeg, a narrow street near the harbor in Amsterdam. 

Today that area of the city is known as the Red Light district to tourists, or De Wallen to the Dutch. Indeed Molensteeg is one of the streets that I reported stumbling upon in an earlier post. 

Since this neighborhood has been the center of prostitution in Amsterdam for about 600 years, and because some art historians claim Quast was born on Molensteeg, there's a strong chance his family was poor and illiterate. This might explain why nothing is known about his early childhood. 

Therefore the first record in the archives about Quast must suffice to fill in the details: the marriage bann in June 1632 and the subsequent wedding with Annetje which took place on 19 December 1632 in Sloten, a nearby village. At some point after the marriage, Pieter and Annetje moved to Den Haag, as he was registered with the artists' guild there in 1634.

The self portrait depicted above runs from that period of Quast's life. The original image is in color, but is held in a private collection. Unfortunately, I have been unsuccessful in locating a color image online. Provenantial records claim the following details about it: Quast depicts himself with "curly wide hair, [a] large beret with notches, [a] string of beads around [his] neck, [a] tube with notches, [his] cloak loosely folded, [and a] chain (?) around [his] shoulders." He looks boldly at the viewer from under a stylish beret. No known portrait of Annetje exists.

The couple had two children, a daughter named Constantia Quast who was born in 1639 and another unnamed child in 1641. Pieter passed away in Amsterdam in 1647. Annetje, his widow, had an eventful life of her own and went on to marry again after Pieter's passing. I will write more about her in another post.

Quast's life was short but momentous.

As part of the Dutch School of artists, Quast's work helped lay the foundation for many of the masters who followed.

His paintings and engravings often feature the daily lives of the poor and elderly, typically with an emphasis on the morality of a situation. This kind of didacticism early in the 17th century developed, by mid-century, into the vanitas images I have written about in previous posts.

Pieter Jansz. Quast
The Foot Operation
n.d., oil on panel
30 x 41 cm
Rijksmuseum

A good example of Quast's work can be found in this image entitled The Foot Operation, c. 1635.

Here the viewer is witness to a surgical procedure of questionable hygienic quality. A splatter of the patient's blood on the floor alludes to the red sash and hat on his body.

In the lower left corner, a skull and open book rest mockingly behind the patient. These items, more than anything else in the room, express the impermanence of vanitas.

The man is aged already; this operation, conducted by a doctor with dirty hands and a filthy towel, tests the patient's life span. His death is foretold, to be read like an open book.

The religious statue on the cabinet above his head looms over him with judgment. The viewer's perspective is level with the subject, suggesting an equal status. We are him; this is our fate too.

Sometimes crude, often satirical, Quast's legacy can be found in the 167 paintings and engravings that are attributed to him. Typically the artist paints from his own life, thus it is quite possible that the scenes of ragged humanity Quast depicts in his work are replicates of the circumstances of his own short existence.

Pieter Jansz. Quast
Quarreling Women
n.d., oil on panel
29.53 x 37.15 cm
Crocker Art Museum

The Crocker displays a Quast in its European collection.

Undated and with a similar color palette as the Rijksmuseum, this image of two women fighting once again presents the viewer with the idea that the artist may have actually been witness to an event like this in his daily life. There is a strength and intimacy to it. One can almost hear the scuffle of the falling chair and the course words of the women as they kick, bite and pull each other's clothes.

In the tussle, a jug of milk has spilled. This would represent a financial loss for those living on the margin, thus making their violence a cautionary tale. Avoid this, avoid loss.

Two men stand behind them, notably not attempting to stop the women. This, too, contains a didactic quality. A person can be known by the company she keeps.

Quast died poor and humble in Amsterdam and was buried at the Nieuwe Kerk there on 29 May 1647.

Beauty and the Vanitas

One of the images on special display right now at the Hermitage Amsterdam is this still life by Willem Claesz. Heda.

Willem Claesz. Heda
Breakfast with a Crab, 1648
oil on canvas
118 x 118 cm
The State Hermitage Museum

Signed and dated in the lower left, it's a fine example of the ontbijt painting, a word that means breakfast in Dutch.

Heda, a Haarlem native, specialized in this type of painting during the second half of the 17th century, an era that has come to be known as the Golden Age of Dutch still life paintings.

Ontbijt, pronounced "onge-bite," even today appears frequently on cafe menus throughout The Netherlands as a way of describing a breakfast meal.

Indeed a couple days ago I ordered an ontbijt at the Barista Cafe on Grote Houtstraat in Haarlem. It included an omelette with cheese and tomato plus two slices of bread, washed down with a double latte, American style.

Heda's ontbijt painting contains a careful study of several objects used by the Dutch merchant class in the 17th century.

These include, on the right, a roemer, or rounded beer glass with bumpy knobs near its base.  Apparently glass blowers placed the knobs near the bottom to keep the glass from slipping out of greasy hands.

Near the center of the composition sits a silver pot, which may have been used for tea but may also represent an early example of the chocolate pot. The finial on top of its lid is the best piece of evidence to support the latter theory, although the date of the painting argues against it as a representation of the chocolate pot, since the earliest references to drinking chocolate do not appear in Europe for another 15 years.

The tall flute glass near the center would be used for beer, another beverage which was undergoing tremendous change.

alewife woodcut, n.d.

Before the 17th century, beer was brewed mostly by women. Known as alewives, these women would brew and bake in the home with the grains harvested from the fields.

Brewing, and then selling the beer out of the home, provided women with a measure of independence and personal sovereignty. It could be said that there was agency in the economics.

Unfortunately, with increasingly globalized trade connections in the 17th century between Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, new pressures came to bear on the alewives. Specialized artisans in Haarlem, Delft and Gouda began brewing commercially for export. Essentially men took over the beer brewing industry when it began to promise mercantile opportunities in a capitalistic system.

Leaving aside the beer to return to the glass from which it was drunk, the viewer of Heda's still life should recognize that although the flute glass originated in Holland, the shape is modeled after the Venetian design known as Façon de Venise. Its use in Haarlem is another example of the marketplace of skills and ideas prevalent during Holland's Golden Age.

On the left side of the table, a half peeled lemon dangles over the edge. This -- along with the crab, olives and bread -- suggests the image is a vanitas. The vanitas painting is something akin to a visual morality tale. Its primary intent is to remind the wealthy that their riches are transient. 

A peeled lemon loses its freshness. The cooked crab quickly goes bad. The message, then, is to enjoy these items but to not take them for granted. Nothing lasts forever. Thus pleasure, and the wealth that brings it, are fleeting. 

The Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento possesses a similar vanitas by Heda. Although undated, the Crocker suggests it is an early example of Heda's work, dating to about 1631. 

Willem Claesz. Heda (1594-1680)
Still Life,  n.d. (c. 1631)
Oil on panel
Crocker Art Museum

Here the viewer can see many of the same symbols as from the later Hermitage image. The roemer, the fish and the silver pot are all characteristic of a Dutch still life. 

Clearly Heda was working out the technique, although this Crocker vanitas has a stilted and clunky feel to it in comparison with the later Hermitage image. Yes, the white table carpet and flute glass appear in both images. And, yes, the background is similarly plain in both. 

But the dramatic use of light and dark in the Hermitage is missing here in the Crocker, and the objects in this earlier composition fail to achieve the balance Heda wrought later in life.

For example, in the Hermitage image the table carpet hangs down below the table while the flute glass pierces upwards above the silver pot to form an apex. This gives the composition depth and dimension, a believable structure which is missing in the Crocker. The only hint of compositional order in the Crocker comes from the implied triangle of light above the objects. 

The key dangling from a blue sash and the open-faced watch in the silver tray in the Crocker act to remind the viewer of the passage of time, similar to the peeled lemon in the Hermitage image, but the blue color fails to pop against the dark folds of the table carpet, thus lessening the meaning of the symbols and diluting the impact of the whole image.

Therefore, while the details in the Crocker image are masterful -- for example, the inlaid abalone on the knife handle and the reflections in the silver-- it is clearly the work of an artist not yet in his prime.

Meet Maria van Oosterwijck

On a quiet hallway in the original section of the Crocker Art Museum there hangs a painting by Maria van Oosterwijck (1630 - 1693), one of the few women artists whose works Margaret Crocker purchased in 1872.

Roses and Butterfly
n.d. (c. 1675)
Oil on canvas 
14 1/2 in. x 11 1/2 in. (36.83 cm x 29.21 cm) 
Crocker Art Museum, E. B. Crocker Collection. 1872.488

Generally categorized as a still-life, this genre was quite common in 17th century Netherlands.

Imagery consisting of flowers, vegetables, sometimes a cooked fish or a bowl of fruit were Dutch artists' favorite still-life subjects. Often a fly or a bee, sometimes a worm or, in this case, a butterfly, can be seen too, usually as a reminder that although the subject is still there is yet life to it.

The still-life was a popular form used by the painter Maria van Oosterwijck, who produced floral images with allegorical themes known as vanitas. The distinction between a still-life and vanitas comes from the didactic nature of the latter. Still-lifes are decorative with an emphasis on the aesthetic; vanitas paintings, on the other hand, contain instruction, usually with a moral imperative. Van Oosterwijck excelled at both.

In this case, Roses and Butterfly has the appearance of a calm still life depicting a provence rose in the center, surrounded by two red striped carnations tied with a blue bow. A white butterfly kisses the rose, the only hint of action in the image.

provence rose

The provence rose, also known as a cabbage rose, or by its Latin name Rosa Centifolia, is a hybrid flower cultivated by Dutch gardeners in the 17th century. At least one source claims that it originated in Persia and arrived in Netherlands in the late 16th century, during a period of "vigorous trade and cultural exchange" between the two regions (Conan 45).

Known for its fragrance and large cabbage-like petals, the provence rose was a popular subject for still life painters of the period. Indeed it is still a prominant plant in gardens around the world today.

The carnations depicted here are a bit more problematic. Known as dianthus, the carnations provide ominous meaning. First, because they are associated with Zeus -- dios means god in Greek, while anthos means flower -- but second because many myths attribute a negative connotation to the red striped carnation, suggesting rejected love or regret. In this painting, the beauty of the fragrant rose is literally surrounded by symbols of power and rejection.

Art historians have determined that Maria van Oosterwijck painted most of her works between 1660 and 1689. Roses and Butterfly was likely painted in the 1670s, based on the subject matter and technique that she used when compared to other similar paintings with known dates. Margaret Crocker purchased this painting on or shortly before the 200th year anniversary of its creation.

There is also the matter of the white butterfly, known locally as vlinder. The Dutch have a proverb for this association between a rose and the butterfly: Een witte vlinder op een rode roos…wat een romantisch beeld. A white butterfly on a red rose ... what a romantic image. 

close-up, vlinder

Yet there is a kind of cynicism freighted to its meaning, particularly adjacent to the red striped carnations. The moth kisses the rose, which is romantic and gives the painting action, but it, too, is surrounded by rejection and refusal. What's more, the image of romance does not match the substance: is this a painting of romance refused? Might the provence rose be a lover scorned? 

These rhetorical questions are reinforced by the universal meaning of the butterfly as one of intransigence and transformation. Love cannot last forever in the face of refusal. It will change. It must change. And when it does, love flutters away like butterfly on the wing.

Finally there is the business with the blue ribbon. Maria van Oosterwijck uses a similar construction in many of her other paintings in the 1670s. Interestingly enough, the blue ribbon is often associated with the Order of the Blue Garter, a symbol of power for the Stuart royal family of England.

Equestrian Portrait of William of Orange
wearing the blue ribbon
Johann Voorhout
c. 1690

In 1672 -- about the time that Maria van Oosterwijck was painting this image -- William of Orange was the reigning Stadholder of Holland. He governed under the authority of the English king, his uncle King Charles II. 

In 1677, -- the upper date for the completion of Maria van Oosterwijck's painting -- William of Orange married his cousin, Mary Stuart. She was the daughter of his other uncle, James, Duke of York, who later became King James II when his older brother Charles II died in 1683. 

William's marriage to Mary solidified the royal houses of England and Holland. Their arranged marriage was a strategic alliance to hold off the threat posed by neighboring King Louis XIV of France. 

Might they be the butterfly and the rose, surrounded by the danger of Louis, the self-proclaimed Sun God king? Clearly this is a matter of conjecture, the answer for which we will never know. 

What can be known for certain is that this still-life, by one of the only women artists acquired by Margaret Crocker in 1872, contains far more meaning than the casual glance might suggest. 

Tourism and the Crocker Mosaic Table

Along with purchasing hundreds of paintings and drawings while on their 1870 Grand Tour, Margaret Crocker and her husband Judge E. B. Crocker also collected furniture, sculpture and tapestries from Europe.

Their goal was to acquire objects of fine art to fill their newly renovated home at 3rd and O Streets, thereby bringing some of the old country to the rough and tumble new state of California.

Micromosaic table top, c. 1870
Cesare Roccheggiani
drawn glass tesserae
Crocker Art Museum

Their sojourn, similar to the travels of many other wealthy Americans in the second half of the 19th century, led them through Italy, Germany and the Netherlands, where the couple would identify objects for purchase with the assistance of art agents and gallery curators.

These objects would then be shipped to California, in many instances arriving in North America before the Crockers themselves returned home.

San Francisco Chronicle · Tue, May 16, 1871 · Page 2

This table is attributed to Cesare Roccheggiani, an Italian artist working in Rome who often catered to tourists. Table-top souvenirs such as this one would usually be sold without a base, which probably explains the last sentence in the news article announcing its arrival to the Golden State. 

San Francisco Chronicle · Fri, Aug 4, 1871 · Page 3

In this 1871 San Francisco Chronicle clip, the table is presented almost as though it were a person, with an invitation to the public to attend an open viewing of it. In a new state and a rough and tumble city, the Chronicle, which was only six years old at the time, was already on the cutting edge of culture and arts promotion in California.

Billed as a "beautiful specimen" that cost 10,500 francs -- the equivalent of about $5,000 in 1870 dollars -- this mosaic table top depicts views from the city of Rome, including St. Peter's Cathedral and the Roman Coliseum. Unlike the easily disposable tourist souvenirs one might purchase today, Roccheggiani's work was expensive then and is quite valuable on the contemporary market now.

Micromosaic table top  c. 1865
Cesare Roccheggiani rosso antico
Piraneseum

For example, one of his micro-mosaic panels recently sold at auction for $32,400. Another object, similar to the table top found at the Crocker, was exhibited at the SFO Museum in 2017, while yet a third large micromosaic has been estimated by Sothebys at valuation over $150,000.

If this micromosaic table is any indication, Margaret Crocker and her husband had a good eye for art and the artists who made them.

It is likely that the City of Sacramento, to whom the Crockers bequeathed their museum-home and all the art works in it, are grateful that Margaret Crocker did not say, as Mark Twain did upon his return from a Grand Tour in 1869, "I know that an exorbitant export duty is exacted upon all pictures painted by the old masters, in order to discourage the sale of those in the private collections. I am satisfied, also, that genuine old masters hardly exist at all, in America, because the cheapest and most insignificant of them are valued at the price of a fine farm. I proposed to buy a small trifle of a Raphael, myself, but the price of it was eighty thousand dollars, the export duty would have made it considerably over a hundred, and so I studied on it awhile and concluded not to take it."

Had she done so, we would not have one of the finest art museums in California. 

A Note About Sources

Anyone who knows me knows that I love books. Reading them, talking about them, writing about them.

This fascination with texts and words on the page has led me to study various topics, including Japanese Culture Through Rare Books at Keio University and the Magna Carta with the British Council through FutureLearn. 

My love of books, both reading them and writing about them, also prompted the creation of a common reading program at CRC called OneBook, which began after three years of best practice research in 2010. This was inspired by a National Endowment for the Arts report in 2007 entitled "To Read or Not to Read" wherein the authors concluded that the decline in literacy rates in the United States represents one of the greatest threats to our democracy. As we open the year 2018, with Twitter and other social media striding loudly upon our daily lives, that report may have been much more prescient than even its own authors realized. 

Magna Carta held at the
Bodleian Library, Oxford, signed
by King John at Runnymede
on June 15, 1215

These New Media sources, whether it's Twitter or online universities, allow learning about old texts in new ways, which is what the Digital Humanities is all about. 

Photo by Martin Grandjean
Network analysis: graph of
Digital Humanities Twitter users

It's a rich and exciting field of study that combines primary source documents from the past with contemporary technological applications and analysis. The Digital Humanities are ripe with possibilities in the 21st century for bibliophiles, librarians and academics of all stripes. 

Beyond this brief primer into the Digital Humanities, however, I want to share with you sources in my preliminary research on the study of the Dutch Masters, those artists whose works are found at the Crocker Art Museum and other themes related to 17th century Netherlands. This is, after all, the focus of the sabbatical. 

In preparation for this project, I read many of the texts listed below in 2017. Some of them, including Simon Schama's seminal work about overvloed -- the Dutch word for abundance -- and their  attendant "embarrassment of riches," will be traveling with me for study and application as I visit museums over the next four months. 

Others, such as Matthew Stewart's text on Leibniz and Spinoza were read and reviewed several years ago. Clearly this research has been on my mind for some time, and it is my hope that you will join me in the reading and writing and talking about the texts to follow:

Bibliography

Baird, Joseph Armstrong, Jr. “The Crocker Art Gallery.” Art Journal. 21.2 (1961-1962): 85-88. JSTOR. 4 Oct 2017.

Berger, Harry, Jr. Caterpillage: Reflections on Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still-Life Painting. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011.

Berger, Harry, Jr. Manhood, Marriage, Mischief: Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch’ and Other Dutch Group Portraits. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007.

Breazeale, William. “Nature and a New Drawing by Otto Marseus van Schrieck.” Master Drawings. 45.4 (2007): 527-533. JSTOR. 4 Oct 2017.

Breazeale, William. “Old Masters in Old California: The Origins of the Drawings Collection at the Crocker Art Museum.” Master Drawings. 46.2 (2008): 205-226. JSTOR. 4 Oct 2017.

Chevalier, Tracy. Girl with a Pearl Earring: A Novel. New York: First Plume, 2001.

Cornelis, Bart and Marijn Schapelhouman, eds. Adriaen va de Velde: Dutch Master of Landscape. Amsterdam: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2016.

Cremers, C. M. “Our Heritage: The Dutch Garden, an Introduction to its History.” Garden History. 2.1 (1973): 10-29. JSTOR. 22 May 2017.

Cruz, Laura. “Turning Dutch: Historical Myths in Early Modern Netherlands.” Sixteenth Century Journal. 39.1 (2008): 3-22. JSTOR. 3 Mar 2017.

Da Silva, Maria Angelica and Melissa Mota Alcides. “Collecting and Framing the Wilderness: The Garden of Johan Maurits (1604-79) in North-East Brazil.” Garden History. 30.2 (2002): 153-176. JSTOR. 22 May 2017.

Den Hartog, Elizabeth and Carla Teune. “Gaspar Fagel (1633-88): His Garden and Plant Collection at Leeuwenhorst.” Garden History. 30.2 (2002): 191-205. JSTOR. 22 May 2017.

Gatacre, Laura. “An English Gardener in a Dutch Historic Garden.” Garden History. 30.2 (2002): 252-262. JSTOR. 22 May 2017.

Honig, Elizabeth Alice. “The Art of Being ‘Artistic’: Dutch Women’s Creative Practices in the 17th Century.” Woman’s Art Journal. 22.2 (2001-2002): 31-39. JSTOR. 23 Oct 2017.

Huygens, Christiaan. “Treatise on Light.” 551-619. Trans. Sylvanus P. Thompson. Newton, Huygens: Great Books of the Western World. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1952.

Israel, Jonathan. The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1995.

Jardine, Lisa. Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland’s Glory. New York: HarperCollins, 2008.

Knapp, Anna C. “From Lowlife to Rustic Idyll: The Peasant Genre in 17th-Century Dutch Drawings and Prints.” Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin. 4.2 (1996): 30-59. JSTOR. 22 May 2017.

Liedtke, Walter. “Frans Hals: Style and Substance.” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. 69.1 (2011): 1, 4-48. JSTOR. 10 Mar 2017.

Liedtke, Walter. “The Study of Dutch Art in America.” Artibus et Historiae. 21.41 (2000): 207 – 220. JSTOR. 1 Mar 2017.

“The Life Story of the Late Margaret Crocker.” San Francisco Call. 91.15 (1901): 4-5. California Digital Newspaper Collection. Web. 3 Jan 2018.

Lowney, Barbara. “Lady Bountiful: Margaret Crocker of Sacramento.” California Historical Society Quarterly. 47.2 (1968): 99-112. JSTOR. 4 Oct 2017.

Panetta, Roger, ed. Dutch New York: The Roots of Hudson Valley Culture. New York: Hudson River Museum, 2009.

Py, Bernadette. “Everhard Jabach: Supplement of Identifiable Drawings from the 1695 Estate Inventory.” Master Drawings. 45.1 (2007): 4-37. JSTOR. 9 Oct 2017.

Rommelse, Gijs. “The Role of Mercantilism in Anglo-Dutch Political Relations, 1650-74.” Economic History Review. 63.3 (2010): 591-611. JSTOR. 3 Mar 2017.

Schama, Simon. The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. New York: Fontana Press, 1987.

Schama, Simon. “Wives and Wantons: Versions of Womanhood in 17th Century Dutch Art.” The Oxford Art Journal. 3.1 (1980): 5-13. JSTOR. 17 Oct 2017.

Sikkens-De Zwaan, Marisca. “Magdalena Poulle (1632-99): A Dutch Lady in a Circle of Botanical Collectors.” Garden History. 30.2 (2002): 206-220. JSTOR. 22 May 2017.

Soll, Jacob. “Accounting for Government: Holland and the Rise of Political Economy in Seventeenth-Century Europe.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 11.2 (2009): 215- 238. JSTOR. 22 May 2017.

Stechow, Wolfgang. Dutch Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966.

Stewart, Matthew. The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006.

Stone-Ferrier, Linda. “Gabriel Metsu’s Vegetable Market at Amsterdam: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Market Paintings and Horticulture.” The Art Bulletin. 71.3 (1989): 428 – 452. JSTOR. 22 May 2017.

Taussig, Karen-Sue. “Bovine Abominations: Genetic Culture and Politics in the Netherlands.” Cultural Anthropology. 19.3 (2004): 305-336. JSTOR. 22 May 2017.

Taylor, Paul. “The Concept of Houding in Dutch Art Theory.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. 55 (1992): 210-232. JSTOR. 17 Oct 2017.

Turner, Jack. Spice: The History of a Temptation. New York: Vintage Books, 2004.

Van Thiel, Pieter J. J. “Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem as a Draughtsman.” Master Drawings. 3.2 (1965): 123-154, 185-199. JSTOR. 10 Mar 2017.

Westermann, Mariet. “After Iconography and Iconoclasm: Current Research in Netherlandish Art, 1566-1700.” The Art Bulletin. 84.2 (2002): 351-372. JSTOR. 22 May 2017.

Art, Cheese and a Walk

In a few weeks my 15 year old daughter, Hope, and I will travel to Europe for a semester of study in the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK. It is a Moore Family Grand Tour, akin to the tours of the 19th century when families would spend extended time in capital cities across the Old Country, relishing art and culture in pursuit of the good life.

This, then, is Sabbatical 2018: to follow in the footsteps of Margaret Crocker, a Founding Mother of Sacramento who took at least two of these Grand Tours, first in 1870-1872 and then again later, around 1880. In both instances Mrs. Crocker traveled to Europe in search of paintings and other fine arts to line the walls of her mansion home at 3rd and O Streets in California's emerging capital.

Margaret Crocker, c. 1885

While I don't plan on purchasing any paintings, I do plan on studying several of the great 17th century Dutch artists whose paintings Crocker acquired during her travels, and which now appear on permanent display in the European section of today's Crocker Art Museum.

Crocker Art Museum, original facade,
photo courtesy of Amadscientist, 2012

The project includes visiting museums, interviewing curators, and researching archives with an eye toward producing materials that will be useful for students of the Humanities at Cosumnes River College. Along the way, I will be blogging experiences with the arts, foods and communities we encounter, hence the title of this first post.

None of this would be possible without the support of CRC's Professional Standards Committee and CRC's President Edward Bush, who graciously approved my proposal in March 2017. Thank you.

Please join us in exploring art, cheese and a walk through Europe!