Crocker Art Museum

George Laurens Kiers’s mother and father were both painters specializing in scenes of daily life. Kiers eventually sought formal training with marine painter J.H.L. Meijer and became a landscapist specializing in shore scenes, in watercolor and etching, as well as oils. He moved between Hague and Amsterdam, before eventually settling in the latter in 1868. This painting depicts a farmer and his family on a levee road bordering a canal. The stragglers lean into their steps to catch up, as the sunset reflected on low clouds leaves them little time before dark. Such scenes challenged artists to depict the shimmering textures of land, water, and sky. George Laurens Kiers (Dutch, 18381916), An Outing. Oil on panel, 10 5/8 x 16 15/16 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Mary Ann and Jan Beekhuis.

Yesterday, we learned that Sacramento County has moved back into the purple/widespread tier due to increased COVID-19 rates. This means that the Crocker, in accordance with directives from state and county health officials, will close again as of Friday, November 13 and will remain closed until further notice. If you have tickets to visit the Museum, we will be contacting you via email to assist you in managing your reservation. We would like to encourage all current ticket holders to consider waiving their refund as a donation to the Museum, and we thank them for their continued support of the Crocker. If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at [email protected] or call (916) 808-1184.

We're having our first child in about a month, give or take a few days, and we're putting together his nursery and have decided to fill the walls with some of our most colorful and intriguing art pieces. While going through my wife's old boxes I came across this painting and to my surprise, on the back, I saw a sticker [showing that it was displayed at the Crocker]. I asked her about it and she confirmed that it hung in your museum for a month; I'm so pleased to know that my son will have a piece of art in his room that hung on your walls. Via @kingsnog and @lcatcola on Instagram. Congrats from all of us at the Crocker and thanks for letting us share your story!

The realities of racial and social inequity within museums and cultural institutions have long been discussed in the field. Join us for dialogue on acknowledging exclusive practices and realities in museums, and solutions for furthering equal access, opportunity, and engagement with the arts for all.

William Theophilus Brown painted recognizable subject matter especially the human figure in order to convey the personal and often introspective exploration of self at a time when non-objective painting dominated. Like his partner Paul Wonner, Brown was an intimate of David Park and a luminary of Bay Area Figuration. In the early 1960s, Brown and Wonner moved to Southern California, and then to Santa Barbara. Before this move, Brown featured nudes rendered in generalized ...but confident painterly strokes. Only when he changed his environs did his mature style emerge. Southern California was an Eden for pursuing the human form and the play of light, and there Brown focused on bathers in bright, frank compositions where both the body and psychological relationships stood front and center. Brown’s later industrial cityscapes composed from on-site sketches and photographs of Alameda, Oakland, and San Francisco are a continuation of his appreciation for the broad, massing of forms and serene settings. His cityscapes executed over a period of five years, from 198590, make the urban environment’s abandoned pockets similarly mysterious. William Theophilus Brown (American, 19192012) Untitled (Industrial Cityscape), 19871988. Acrylic on canvas, 54 x 60 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of James R. and Suzette M. Smith, 2008.50.

In 1917, an Oakland-based group of painters formed an association known as the Society of Six. Working in a Post-Impressionist and sometimes even Fauvist style, these six plein-air painters William Clapp, Bernard von Eichman, August Gay, Maurice Logan, Louis Siegriest, and Selden Gile brought a new emphasis on abstraction and vibrant color to their art. Gathering at Gile’s home in Oakland, they socialized, critiqued each other’s work, painted, and exhibited together. Prim...arily landscapists, their subjects included the East Bay’s hillsides, architecture, and waterfronts; here, Gile depicts his own garden. These expressive, painterly oils ultimately influenced Bay Area figurative painters and other artists of the 1950s and ’60s who had an affinity for the viscosity of paint. A leader of the Six, Gile was a native of Maine. He completed high school in 1894 in Fryeburg and then lived with his brother Frank in Portland, where he attended Shaw’s Business College. He came west in 1901 and worked as a paymaster and clerk on a ranch in Rocklin, near Sacramento. He moved to Oakland in 1905 and sold ceramic building materials for Gladding, McBean and Company. Gile’s early work manifests the influence of Northern California Tonalists like William Keith and Arthur Mathews. However, the paintings shown at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition forever changed his approach. Now fully exposed to European modernism, Gile embraced brilliant color and Impressionist brushwork. He exhibited regularly with other members of the Six at the Oakland Art Gallery (now Oakland Museum of California) and under the auspices of the San Francisco Art Association. He lived in the Oakland Hills until 1927 when he moved to Tiburon and, from there, to nearby Belvedere. Selden Connor Gile (American, 18771947) The Garden, 1919. Oil on canvas, 18 in. x 22 in. Crocker Art Museum, Melza and Ted Barr Collection, 2010.2.6.

Take inspiration from our upcoming Betye, Alison, and Lezley Saar show and create radical, disruptive portraits through mixed media and found objects.

Both an artist and collector, Thomas Lawrence was the most important British portraitist at the turn of the 19th century.

Todd Schorr grew up in the small suburban town of Oakland, New Jersey. Expressing a compulsion for drawing at an early age, his parents enrolled him in art classes when he was five, which he continued through high school. The pop icons of his childhood especially fantasy movies like "King Kong" (1933) left a lasting impression on the budding artist. In 1966, his mother took him to see a Salvador Dalí retrospective at Manhattan’s Gallery of Modern Art. It was there t...hat he connected the surreal, pliable-looking figures in Dalí’s work to those in the cartoons on television. A third seminal event occurred in 1970, when Schorr visited the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. It was then that he formulated the idea of combining his love of cartoons with the painting techniques of the Old Masters. In this painting, Schorr takes a critical look at the fight against aging. The inhabitants of this Fountain of Youth do not present attractive offerings. A toddler with the face of a grizzled man, reminiscent of the mobster Babyface Finster from a Bugs Bunny cartoon, sits in the mythical spring. He is accompanied by a woman with the head of a baby and a skeletal Juan Ponce de León (14601521), the latter a Spanish explorer who, according to legend, sought the Fountain of Youth in the early 16th century. Here, León has wasted away and wears a soiled diaper. On the left left, a Frankenstein-like Father Time holds an hourglass containing the wonders of the universe. His other hand rests on the shoulder of a skeptical, aging Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn’t grow up. Todd Schorr (American, born 1954), Neverlasting Miracles, 2012. Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 54 in. (framed). Private Collection, Todd Schorr. Part of Todd Schorr: Atomic Cocktail, sponsored by Juxtapoz Magazine.

"[These works] address the freedom of traveling in dreams to unknown landscapes and the possible future in three stages as a dream; they represent a world cultural revision, a personal rise, and the arrival at the entrance to a new spiritual temple." The Crocker is proud to present Multiple Horizons: Native Perspectives at the Crossroads", a show featuring regional Tribal artists, community, and youth. We asked several artists, including Stan Padilla, to talk about their art..., process, and what the show means to them. "Multiple Horizons" is a space for the local Cultural Arts community to share their perspectives on the cultural landscape of the Sacramento region; we invite everyone to reflect on their own relationship to the ancestral Nisenan territory the Museum was built on. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with concept: art + movement, an incubator of Arts and Culture El Dorado, and the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians. See the full exhibition here: https://www.crockerart.org/collections/multiplehorizons

The UC Davis Human Rights Film Festival starts this Thursday at 5:10 PM! The multi-day online festival features a selection of five Human Rights Watch films, as well as Q&A sessions with filmmakers and scholars. Each movie bears powerful and moving witness to human rights issues both locally and globally, from involuntary sterilizations in California's women’s prison system to a fight against one of the world’s largest gold-mining corporations in Peru. More information and ti...ckets at dhi.ucdavis.edu/filmfestival. The UC Davis Human Rights Film Festival is sponsored by the UC Davis Humanities Institute, UC Davis Human Rights Studies, and the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. Co-sponsors include: the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, Bita Daryabari Endowment in Persian Language and Literature, Hemispheric Institute on the Americas, BAMPFA, and the Crocker. Image: "Gather", directed by Sanjay Rawal.

Rockwell Kent enjoyed a long and varied career. Although best known as an artist, he was also an author, political activist, architectural draftsman, illustrator, printmaker, potter, and designer of decorative arts. Kent was born in Tarrytown Heights, New York, and first attended the Cheshire Academy and the Horace Mann School in New York City, where he studied woodworking and mechanical drawing. At the turn of the century, he studied with William Merritt Chase at his summer ...school at Shinnecock, Long Island, and became a student at Columbia University’s School of Architecture. Increasingly drawn to fine art, he dropped out just before his senior year and enrolled full time at the New York School of Art, where his teachers included Chase, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and Robert Henri. He also became Abbott Thayer’s assistant at his New Hampshire studio and later married Thayer’s niece, Kathleen Whiting, with whom he had five children. Kent was an avid traveler, particularly to colder climates like Newfoundland, Alaska, and Greenland. He wrote and illustrated books about his travels, including Salamina about Greenland, where he worked in 1929, 193132, and 1934. He traveled to locations by dog sled and painted the landscape, producing powerfully reductive snow-clad vistas. In these paintings, Kent presents nature as sublime and imbued with transcendental meaning, continuing 19th-century traditions but with a modernist’s eye for form. Rockwell Kent (American, 18821971) March, Greenland, 19321933. Oil on canvas mounted on board, 34 in. x 44 in. Crocker Art Museum Purchase, conserved with funds provided by Louise and Victor Graf, 1975.25.

Wayne Thiebaud 100: Prints, Paintings, and Drawings is open and so is the Crocker! To help ensure your health and comfort, entry will be by timed ticket. Please note, tickets must be purchased in advance. Here's what you need to know before visiting: Our hours have changed. We're now open four days a week, Thursday through Sunday from 10 AM to 5 PM. Visitors over the age of two and staff will be required to wear protective face coverings while inside the Museum.... ...... Remember to maintain social distance. Stay six feet from other guests. Cleaning protocols have been enhanced throughout the building and plexiglass partitions have been installed at the visitor services desk. Tot Land is closed, and shared materials like gallery activities and Story Trail books and quilts are temporarily unavailable. Food service and drinking fountains are closed. And most importantly: Stay home if you are not feeling well. We will continue to offer robust virtual offerings, including an online exhibition and walkthrough of "Wayne Thiebaud 100". New in-person programs, events, and activities will return as COVID-19 wanes. Additional information including how to buy tickets is available at crockerart.org/location. For a full list of current exhibitions, go to crockerart.org/exhibitions. Image: Wayne Thiebaud, Lipsticks, 1988. Color etching hand-worked with colored pencil, 6 7/8 x 5 13/16 in. (plate), 16 x 14 3/4 in. (sheet). Crocker Art Museum, gift of the Artist's family, 1995.9.39. Wayne Thiebaud / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

Best known for her story quilts, Faith Ringgold is a painter, mixed-media sculptor, performance artist, activist, author, and teacher. Named Faith as a symbol of healing and hope, Ringgold grew up surrounded by future legends like Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes. Due to her chronic asthma, she spent most of her time indoors, cultivating her creativity with crayons, sewing, and her mother's fabrics. In the 1950s, Ringgold completed a bachelor’s degree in fine art and educ...ation and a master’s degree in art at the City College of New York. I got a fabulous education in art," she said, "wonderful teachers who taught me everything, except anything about African art or African American art. But I traveled and took care of that part myself. A decade later, Ringgold and her husband were showing a Manhattan gallerist examples of her still lifes and landscapes. The gallerist responded, You can’t do that. Ringgold came to realize, What she’s saying is: It’s the 1960s, all hell is breaking loose all over, and you’re painting flowers and leaves. You can’t do that. Your job is to tell your story. Ringgold responded with an iconic series paintings called the "American People"; it an unflinching exploration of race relations in the United States. She also formed the Ad Hoc Women's Art Committee with several others to protest the Whitney Museum of American Art’s virtual exclusion of women from its annual show. They demand that 50 percent of the artists be women. Although the Whitney didn’t meet this goal, the museum did include 20 percent the following year. Today, Ringgold is included in the Whitney’s collection, and continues to champion equality and freedom of speech. This work depicts eight distinguished Black women from history participating in a quilting bee. The scene is a celebration of female solidarity; the women are pursuing the historically feminine tradition of quilting, whereas male-dominated painting is represented by Vincent van Gogh, who holds a vase of flowers reminiscent of his still lifes painted in Arles, France. Faith Ringgold (American, born 1930), "The Sunflower's Quilting Bee at Arles", 1997. Silkscreen. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Shirley and Guy Moore.

During the 1960s, Chicano artists in California began to explore personal identity amid the momentum of the civil rights movement. Eduardo Carrillo, in particular, mined the vast Pre-Columbian and Hispanic cultural inheritance for signs and symbols. Born in Santa Monica and a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, Carrillo created an art of personal, enigmatic revelations, on canvas and in public art. From early on it was apparent that Carrillo’s interests wer...e narrative and allegorical, setting him apart from Southern California Hard-Edge Painting, Pop Art, and L.A. Finish movements. In 1966, Carrillo moved to La Paz, Baja California, home of his grandparents, and established the Centro de Arte Regional, which he directed until 1969. His activist bent, however, faltered on his return to Los Angeles. The violence that marred the Chicanos against the Vietnam War demonstration in August 1970 disillusioned him, and he moved to Sacramento for a brief time. Las Tropicanas is Carrillo’s most fantastic composition outside of his mural art. Its medley of strange juxtapositions summons our contemplation of altered states of consciousness. In this place, the gods and goddesses of many cultures assemble among a host of animals and symbols of civilizations ancient and modern. Here, viewers are invited to witness a wellspring of myth, an alternate dimension formed of shifting optical and theoretical perspectives. Eduardo Carrillo, Las Tropicanas (detail), 197273. Oil on panel, 84 x 132 in. Crocker Art Museum, promised gift of Juliette Carrillo and Ruben Carrillo.

It wasn’t until 1852 that California’s first prison, San Quentin, was established. By 1861 the legislature recognized the need for another prison, and in 1878 construction of Folsom Prison commenced. The Folsom site outside of Sacramento was near a river, rail transportation, and had enough granite that prisoners brought in from San Quentin could quarry the materials needed to construct the prison hard labor was part of their punishment. With its first two cell blocks com...plete, the prison was officially opened in July 1880. It was the first U.S. penitentiary to have electricity, after the Folsom Dam was completed using prison labor, in 1893. It took more than 40 years to complete the granite wall enclosing the prison grounds. Since 1865, California code had dictated prisoners wear the striped uniform, but Folsom prisoners were by necessity permitted to keep the coat, vest, and hat worn on arrival, thus the variety of pork-pies, bowlers, and fedoras seen here. Not until the progressive prison reform initiatives of the 1910s and 1920s would the stigma of the stripes be addressed. Unlike many extant historical images, these men are aware that they are being photographed, and several look directly at the camera. The date range for this photo can be narrowed down by the presence of the electric pole lights and incomplete section of granite wall, as well as the finished base of the guard tower. Photographer unknown (American, active late 19th century), Folsom Prison Photo: Prisoner's Line, circa 1895. Albumen print, 11 7/8 in. x 13 1/2 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Richard B. Hansen.

In the early 20th century, the most influential proponent of American photography was Alfred Stieglitz, who made photographs, published the quarterly Camera Work from 1903 to 1917, and exhibited photography as fine art in his galleries. In 1933, Ansel Adams traveled to New York City to share his portfolio with Stieglitz, and in 1936, the gallery owner offered to exhibit Adams’s work. Over time, Adams’s friendship with Stieglitz grew, as did his lifelong friendship with Stie...glitz’s wife, Georgia O’Keeffe. Like other professional photographers, Adams supplemented his livelihood with commissions, many of which featured subjects far removed from his dramatic visions of the Western wilderness. In 1962, Adams accepted a commission to photograph the rolling hills and open pastures just outside of Sacramento, producing descriptive images of foothill granite outcroppings and the dramatic branching of California oaks in grassy fields. Oak Tree, Sunset City is one of these photographs. Ansel Adams (American, 19021984), Oak Tree, Sunset City, 1962. Gelatin silver print, 10 1/4 x 12 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of the Artist, 1963.11.13.

[OPENING IN 2021] Legends from Los Angeles: Betye, Lezley, and Alison Saar in the Crocker Collection

Like many African American artists of his time, Richard Mayhew wasn’t just a painter: He was an activist. In 1963, Mayhew joined the Spiral, a Harlem-based collective formed by Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, Norman Lewis, and Hale Woodruff to discuss the role of African American artists in the politics and culture of America. However, unlike his colleagues, Mayhew eschewed African American themes in favor of pursuing transcendence through the spirituality of landscape. To Ma...yhew, the path depicted in this painting represents the road not taken. Mayhew was once a jazz musician, but when faced with choosing between a career in music or in painting, he opted for the latter. His talent for musical improvisation carried over into his spontaneous, expressionistic landscape paintings, which he refers to as moodscapes. Note Mayhew’s bold use of color, which was inspired by his studies of color theory. Today Richard Mayhew is recognized as one of the most important African American abstract landscape painters of the 20th century. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum, as well as the Crocker. Richard Mayhew (American, born 1924), Nostalgia, 2016. Oil on canvas. Loan by the artist, promised gift of Loren G. Lipson, M.D.

Born in Hangzhou, China, Si-Chen Yuan studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Nanking, where he practiced Western painting styles and worked in oil paint as opposed to traditional ink. By the time of his graduation, China was in turmoil, caught between nationalist and communist politics, and for a time, Yuan worked as an artist producing political propaganda for the Nationalist party. But, when the Communist party gained control in 1949, he left China. The following year he bec...ame a United States citizen. Yuan was seduced by Monterey’s dramatic coast and moved there in 1951. He married in 1953, and the following year his daughter Rae, the subject of this portrait, was born. Rae is a quiet and lovely young woman in this painting; she was perhaps as young as 14 when she sat for her father. In addition to portraits of family and friends, Yuan painted a range of subject matter, including still lifes, landscapes, and seascapes, and he experimented with non-representational abstraction. He painted swiftly and energetically, as friends recall, using broad strokes to rapidly render his subjects, and delighted in the interplay of color, which he applied thickly. S. C. Yuan (American, born China, 19111974), Portrait of Rae, circa 19681970. Oil on canvas, 36 x 35 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Barbara and William Hyland, Monterey, California, 2008.90.

Look who stopped by to see his exhibition before it opened to the public

Andreas Achenbach, the son of a successful merchant in Kassel, began his studies at the Düsseldorf Academy at the age of 12. Working under Wilhelm von Schadow, Achenbach showed such talent that his father took him on his travels to the Netherlands and the Baltic states in 183233. In the Netherlands, he was exposed to 17th-century landscape painting, which reinforced his German training in the subject, while the Latvian coast inspired his later interest in marine painting. In... 1835, Achenbach went to Munich to study under the painter Louis Gurlitt, who turned the young artist’s attention to the realistic current then gaining popularity. He traveled widely throughout Europe in the late 1830s and 1840s, from Norway to Southern Italy as well as through the Bavarian and Austrian Alps. He settled in Düsseldorf in 1846 and became a leader in the city’s artistic life, both in arts organizations such as the Malkasten and as a teacher. In this painting, which dates from Achenbach’s early maturity, the memory of his trip to the North Sea coast of Scandinavia is still fresh. The churning drama of the waves and the foreground shipwreck reflect a heightened emotion that belie the artist’s realist training in Munich. The birds flying through the storm contrast with humanity’s helplessness in the face of nature. Andreas Achenbach (German, 18151910), Norwegian Coast by Moonlight, 1848. Oil on canvas, 10 3/8 in. x 14 1/2 in. Crocker Art Museum, E. B. Crocker Collection, 1872.426.

Today is Election Day! In celebration of the U.S. Bicentennial of 1976, twelve American artists were asked the following question: What does independence mean to me?" African American artist Jacob Lawrence responded with this print, which refers to the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South a theme depicted in his earlier The Migration Series. Voting was a freedom that many Black Americans experienced for the first time after moving to cities in nor...thern states. Here, figures cast their votes using the gear-and-lever machine visible in the background. Jacob Lawrence (American, 19172000), The 1920’s...The Migrants Arrive and Cast Their Ballots, 1974. Silk screen on Domestic Etching paper through hand-cut film stencils, Image: 32 x 24 1/4 in. Paper: 34 1/2 x 26 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Lorillard, New York City. The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 1975.28.8.

It’s not all pies, pies, and more pies! Explore some of the Wayne Thiebaud's lesser known works with Thiebaud 101: Figurative Drawing. Then, learn contour and gesture drawing using pencil and charcoal before creating your own work on paper.

Officially, San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) celebrated the completion of the Panama Canal. However, it also repositioned San Francisco as an economic and cultural leader following the earthquake and fire of 1906.

Widely regarded as Mexico’s foremost colorist, Rufino Tamayo was born in Oaxaca and began studying art in Mexico City. Soon after beginning his studies at the National Museum of Archaeology, he accepted a position as head of the art department at the National Museum of Archaeology. Tamayo was quickly inspired by the cultural heritage he discovered there. He introduced designs, colors, and textures he found in historic pieces into his own style, which made his art dramatically... different from that of the celebrated muralists who drew their subjects from the more recent revolutionary past. Although Tamayo's work revived an interest in easel painting, he remained overshadowed by Diego Rivera, José David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco in Mexico. In 1936, Tamayo moved to New York City, where he lived until 1949. In New York, his circle included luminaries like Marcel Duchamp, Reginald Marsh, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Stuart Davis, and eventually collectors such as Samuel A. Lewisohn, vice-president of the Museum of Modern Art. Only when he returned to Mexico in 1961 did Tamayo receive the recognition at home that he readily garnered abroad. Tamayo regarded his work as progressive, and in cosmically themed paintings from the 1940s and ’50s he dealt with the arrival of the space age and his fears of annihilation. By the time he painted Laughing Woman, he was not alone in such anxiety, but he was at heart a humanist whose figures expressed dignity and joy more often than terror. Rufino Tamayo (Mexican, active New York, 18991991), Laughing Woman, 1950. Oil on canvas, 39 1/2 in. x 32 in. Crocker Art Museum Purchase.

Richard Diebenkorn began his art career as an abstract painter, having studied at the California School of Fine Arts under David Park and Elmer Bischoff in the 1940s. As a junior faculty member at this same institution, he was in direct contact with the Abstract Expressionists Clyfford Still and Mark Rothko, who both taught at the school in 1947. After graduate study in New Mexico and teaching experience in Illinois, Diebenkorn chose to settle in Berkeley in 1953, where he be...gan an extended period of concentrated painting. The lush terrain of the Bay Area with its verdant color and intense light exerted itself on the artist, and he subsequently brought both strong color and representation back into his painting. He renewed his contact with Park and Bischoff during this period and began to paint figure studies, finding the analysis of the figure to be an immensely satisfying problem. He was greatly interested in working paint onto and about the canvas, creating activated, expressive surfaces. In 1955, at the same time Diebenkorn worked on his famed Berkeley Series of abstracted landscapes, he began to paint still lifes, many of which are small and intended for intimate viewing. He arranged cups, books, and flowers on a table and studied them by reworking the paint. With their pure color and lively surfaces, these canvases became emotionally charged, as Diebenkorn intended. Richard Diebenkorn (American, 19221993) Flowers, 1957. Oil on canvas, 13 1/2 in. x 17 1/2 in. Crocker Art Museum Purchase, 1971.5.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, artists often borrowed elements from other cultures to add notes of exoticism to their paintings. Many used Japanese kimonos and Chinese robes in paintings of women to introduce color and pattern and, at the same time, to showcase the cosmopolitan taste of their subjects. Many well-to-do women did, in fact, wear such clothing around the home as a fashionable and comfortable alternative to Victorian corseted attire. The woman depict...ed here also wears a jade bracelet and necklace, the latter providing the painting’s title. The creator of this work, Guy Rose, knew fashion. To supplement his income as a painter, he worked as an illustrator, producing fashion illustrations with his wife, Ethel, who the fashion representative for Harper’s Bazar (now Bazaar). Her position allowed the couple to spend many years in France and purchase a cottage in Giverny. Guy Rose eventually met Monet, who became his mentor and influenced his paint application, approach to color, and lightness of touch. Guy Rose (American, 18671925), Jade Beads, circa 19071912. Oil on canvas. Crocker Art Museum, long-term loan and promised gift of The Rose Art Foundation.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: We want your rat erotica. Context: https://news.artnet.com/art/john-oliver-museum-loan-1913434.

Itching to get out of the house? Try our our socially-distanced glass fusing class!

Tired of staring at your computer screen? Bored of game night and family Zoom calls? Try @ Home Studio, a subscription box filled with multi-layered art adventures for adults and children alike. This month's box was inspired by printmakers Katherine Venturelli, Utagawa Kunisada, and Enrique Chagoya!

In an effort to cut costs in 2014, the city of Flint, Michigan switched its water source to the nearby Flint River. Almost immediately residents of Flint a majority-Black city began reporting issues with their water. For months, officials denied there was a serious problem, even when confronted with bottles of rust-colored water. It was later discovered that the city had failed to use corrosion inhibitors, causing lead to leach into the water. It took nearly two years, se...veral studies, and multiple leadership changes before a state of emergency was declared. A plan to remove lead piping from 6,000 homes was finally announced on April 28, 2017. As of August, the city still had 2,500 homes to inspect. The inhibitors would have cost Flint an estimated $140 a day. This work by Alison Saar was created in response to the ongoing crisis in Flint. While working in New Orleans in 2013, Saar was dismayed to see residual damage from Hurricane Katrina, which had happened eight years prior. After researching the history of rivers, floods, and the disproportionate effects on African American communities, she produced a body of work informed by the politics of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, as well as more recent disasters. In this work, light illuminates discolored water in bottles labeled with the names of the rivers of Hades, the underworld in Greek mythology. The acronym in the title of the work refers to the Department of Water and Power in Los Angeles, the artist’s hometown. Note the eerie, ghost-like appearance of the drowning figures etched onto the jars. Each one represents one of the five stages of grief. Alison Saar (American, born 1956), "Hades D.W.P. II", 2016. Etched glass jars, water, dye, wood, cloth and ink transfer, electronics, found ladles and cups, 30 x 50 x 16 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Loren G. Lipson, M.D., Alison Saar. Photo: John Wynn / Lafayette Art Galleries, 2018.3.

Born in the town of Langres north of Dijon, Claude Gillot was first trained by his father before being apprenticed to the painter Jean-Baptiste Corneille in Paris. His vivid imagination made him a skilled designer of book illustrations and theater sets, in which his knowledge of drama and comedy found free rein. Gillot was a member of the Académie royale from 1715, though even at that date he had discarded painting in favor of drawing and engraving. The master of Watteau, he ...surely contributed to the younger artist’s delight in the decorative and imaginative. This sheet is one of Gillot’s most lively compositions. Before a witches’ sabbath, an aged man reclines reading a book, perhaps of spells. A female figure, her ladder placed against the gibbet, turns towards her audience of demons before cutting down the body of a hanged woman. Spirits and witches swoop toward her on a burning broom, the entire scene lit from behind with hellish flames. At right, a demon-filled boat approaches the shore, guided by the lighthouse behind and preceded by a sea-spirit. Other, smaller demons are scattered throughout the composition, some bearing a coffin. Though the scene may have served as a backdrop to a sinister play, it is more likely a purely creative independent work. Claude Gillot (French, 16731722), Scene of Sorcery, n.d. Pen and black and dark gray ink, brush and red washes on cream laid paper, 8 1/4 in. x 12 15/16 in. Crocker Art Museum, E.B. Crocker Collection.

"Shelter-In-Place Exhibit, Fig. 31: Don't Talk to Me or My Son Ever Again" IG : @sum_dux

In an increasingly urbanized Netherlands, landscapes depicting the unique aspects of the Dutch countryside were especially sought after in the 19th century. Here, peasants pass through uncultivated land that supports only low growth with a few scattered trees. The scenes of lonely paths lit by the rays of the waning sun is calculated to evoke pensive solitude. Trained at the Hague art Academy, Cornelis Westerbeek spent his entire career in the city. His work was well received in the Netherlands during the 1880s and 90s. Westerbeek was greatly praised for his landscapes depicting the heather districts of Holland, especially his sunsets as seen here. Cornelis Westerbeek Sr. (Dutch, 18441903), Figures on a Country Road. Oil on panel, 10 5/8 x 15 3/8 in. Promised gift of Mary Ann and Jan Beekhuis.

Ever wanted to hang your work on our walls? Now's your chance. We're selecting five artists from the Crocker Kingsley exhibition to display in 2021. Hurry: The deadline for submission is November 1. Go to bluelinearts.org/crocker-kingsley-2021 to learn more.

Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Xavier Martinez displayed an early aptitude for drawing and studied pre-Columbian art and indigenous design in his teens at the Liceo de Varones, Guadalajara. When his foster father formerly the Consul General to Paris was reassigned to San Francisco, Martinez followed him and enrolled at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art. Studying under Arthur Mathews, Amédée Joullin, Raymond Yelland, and others, he graduated in 1897 and for a short time serv...ed as an assistant to Mathews before leaving for Paris that fall. During his four years in Paris, Martinez spent the first two studying at the École des Beaux-Arts under Jean-Léon Gérôme. He then enrolled at the Académie Carrière under Eugène Carrière, who was known for his dusky, Rembrandt-esque portraits with strong chiaroscuro effects. He also became acquainted with artist James Whistler, the Symbolist writer Joris-Karl Huysmans, and graphic artist Théophile Alexandre Steinlen. Of all of the art styles that Martinez encountered in Europe, the Tonalism of Whistler and Carrière had the most profound effect on his own production. The influence of the Spanish masters, whose work he saw in the Louvre and on a European tour, was also pronounced. This darkly suggestive landscape with tiny frolicking figures and a wooded pool is Symbolist in feeling and relates to French 19th-century poetry in its aim to suggest rather than describe reality. Writer Porter Garnett explained: Low in key and subtle in values, his pictures express in tone and color something of what such poets as Stephane Mallarmé and Henri de Regnier express in the nuances of their musical verbiage (Art in California, 1988). Xavier Martinez (American, born Mexico, 18691943), The Bathers, n.d. Oil on canvas, 16 in. x 13 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of William C. Wright, 1962.22.

Applications for our youth-led Block by Block Street Team are now available! Formed in 2015, Crocker Art Museum Block by Block seeks to enhance the quality of life and cultural participation in Sacramento’s urban core through hyperlocal experiences made for and by the community. This year, Street Team members will help facilitate art engagement experiences in Districts 7 and 8 Greenhaven, Pocket, Meadowview, and South Sac, plus nearby communities via high-tech and no-tec...h platforms. This is a PAID opportunity. However, applicants must meet the following requirements: Be between the ages of 14-17 Be a resident of, or go to school in, Districts 7 or 8 Have access to transportation throughout the City Are available after school during the year Able to supply the appropriate I-9 documentation. The deadline to apply is November 6! For questions or concerns email [email protected]. Applications at https://crockerart.typeform.com/to/H2i6PF.

An artist whose first training was in woodcut rather than painting, Christian Friedrich Mali was born in the Netherlands to German parents. Mali studied landscape painting in Munich beginning in 1857. His brother Johann, also a painter, was instrumental in his training as well. Mali eventually traveled to Italy, where became interested in architectural views. From there, he went to Paris and honed his skills with the landscapist Constant Troyon and then settled in Munich. Hi...s friend Anton Braith, with whom he built a house in the city, fostered his interest in animal painting. Their shared studio has been preserved as a museum. The 19th century brought a new interest in the history, customs, and building traditions of the German people. Writers recorded peasant tales, while painters included farm life, rural buildings, and native costumes in their picturesque views. This interest grew stronger as industrial city dwellers looked back to an idealized rural past. Swabia, in southwestern Germany, was especially well-traveled by painters and literary men, who appreciated the unspoiled Black Forest. In this painting, Mali captures the humid atmosphere of isolated farmsteads after an afternoon shower. His detailed view shows his skills as an architectural, landscape, and animal painter. Since his family was Swabian, he may have had a personal interest in depicting such a scene. Christian Friedrich Mali (German, 18321906), Swabian Village After a Rain, circa 1870. Oil on canvas, 31 in. x 38 1/2 in. Crocker Art Museum, E.B. Crocker Collection.