William Keith (November 18, 1838 – April 13, 1911) was a Scottish-American painter famous for his California landscapes. He is associated with
Tonalism
Tonalism was an artistic style that emerged in the 1880s when American artists began to paint landscape forms with an overall tone of colored atmosphere or mist. Between 1880 and 1915, dark, neutral hues such as gray, brown or blue, often domina ...
and the
American Barbizon school
The American Barbizon School was a group of painters and style partly influenced by the French Barbizon school, who were noted for their simple, pastoral scenes painted directly from nature. American Barbizon artists concentrated on painting rur ...
. Although most of his career was spent in California, he started out in New York, made two extended study trips to Europe, and had a studio in Boston in 1871–72 and one in New York in 1880.
Early life
Keith was born in
Oldmeldrum
Oldmeldrum (commonly known as Meldrum) is a village and parish in the Formartine area of Aberdeenshire, not far from Inverurie in North East Scotland. With a population of around 2,187, Oldmeldrum falls within Scotland's top 300 centres of popu ...
,
Aberdeenshire
Aberdeenshire ( sco, Aiberdeenshire; gd, Siorrachd Obar Dheathain) is one of the 32 Subdivisions of Scotland#council areas of Scotland, council areas of Scotland.
It takes its name from the County of Aberdeen which has substantially differe ...
, Scotland, where he was raised at first by his grandparents, his father having died months before he was born. William claimed to have been a direct descendant of the noble
Clan Keith
Clan Keith is a Highland and Lowland Scottish clan, whose Chief historically held the hereditary title of Marischal, then Great Marischal, then Earl Marischal of Scotland.Way, George and Squire, Romily. (1994). ''Collins Scottish Clan & Family E ...
. He emigrated with his mother and sisters to the United States in 1850. They settled in New York City, where he attended school for several years and became an apprentice wood
engraver in 1856. He was hired to do illustrations for ''
Harper's Magazine
''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (''Scientific American'' is older, b ...
''. In 1858 he visited Scotland and England and briefly worked for the ''
London Daily News
The ''London Daily News'' was a short-lived London newspaper owned by Robert Maxwell. It was published from 24 February to 23 July 1987.
History
The ''London Daily News'' was intended to be a "24-hour" paper challenging the local dominance of t ...
''. He was then offered an opportunity in San Francisco and sailed there in May 1859.
[Alfred C Harrison, Jr., "The Art of William Keith," in ''William Keith: The Saint Mary's College Collection'' (1988, ), reprinted in ''The Comprehensive Keith'' (2011, ).]
California and Europe
Upon Keith's arrival in San Francisco the job he had hoped for did not materialize, so he set up his own engraving business. He formed a partnership with Harrison Eastman in 1862 and with Durbin Van Vleck in 1864. He first studied painting with
Samuel Marsden Brookes
Samuel Marsden Brookes (8 March 1816, Newington Green, Middlesex – 31 January 1892, San Francisco) was an English-born American painter. He specialized in still lifes of fish and game, but began as a portrait painter and also produced some lan ...
in 1863, and may have taken watercolor instruction from Elizabeth Emerson, whom he married in 1864. He first exhibited his watercolors in 1866, and they were praised by critics. His subject matter already included views of Yosemite and other High Sierra locations. By 1868 he had begun painting in oils. That year Keith was able to end his engraving career and pursue painting full-time when he received a commission from the Oregon Navigation and Railroad Company to paint scenes of the
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...
.
The Keiths went to
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...
, Germany, in 1869–71, following in the footsteps of American artists such as
Albert Bierstadt
Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was a German-American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was no ...
and
Worthington Whittredge
Thomas Worthington Whittredge (May 22, 1820 – February 25, 1910) was an American artist of the Hudson River School. Whittredge was a highly regarded artist of his time, and was friends with several leading Hudson River School artists includin ...
. While there, Keith studied under
Albert Flamm, but also wrote enthusiastically in letters about the free, "suggestive" brushwork of
Andreas Achenbach
Andreas Achenbach (29 September 1815, Kassel – 1 April 1910, Düsseldorf) was a German landscape and seascape painter in the Romantic style. He is considered to be one of the founders of the Düsseldorf School. His brother, Oswald, was also a ...
. He also spent time in Paris, where he admired both the old masters and the
Barbizon school
The Barbizon school of painters were part of an art movement towards Realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870. It takes its name f ...
painters. Upon his return to the United States, he shared a studio in Boston with William Hahn from 1871 to 1872.
Friendship with John Muir
Keith then returned to California, and traveled to
Yosemite Valley
Yosemite Valley ( ; ''Yosemite'', Miwok for "killer") is a U-shaped valley, glacial valley in Yosemite National Park in the western Sierra Nevada (U.S.), Sierra Nevada mountains of Central California. The valley is about long and deep, surroun ...
with a letter of introduction to
John Muir
John Muir ( ; April 21, 1838December 24, 1914), also known as "John of the Mountains" and "Father of the National Parks", was an influential Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, botanist, zoologist, glaciologist, a ...
. The two men became deep friends for the next 38 years. Both had been born in Scotland the same year, and they shared a love for the mountains of California. James Mitchell Clarke described their friendship as one "in which deep affection and admiration were expressed through a kind of verbal boxing, counter-jibe answering jibe, counter-insult responding to insult."
"Epic" paintings of the High Sierra, 1870s
During the 1870s Keith painted a number of six- by ten-foot panoramas, including ''Kings River Canyon'' (
Oakland Museum
The Oakland Museum of California or OMCA (formerly the Oakland Museum) is an interdisciplinary museum dedicated to the art, history, and natural science of California, located adjacent to Oak Street, 10th Street, and 11th Street in Oakland, Cal ...
, originally owned by Governor
Leland Stanford
Amasa Leland Stanford (March 9, 1824June 21, 1893) was an American industrialist and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 8th governor of California from 1862 to 1863 and represented California in the United States Se ...
) and "California Alps" (
Mission Inn, Riverside). These competed with paintings of similar size and subject matter by Albert Bierstadt and
Thomas Hill.
The 1880s
Keith's wife Elizabeth died in 1882. He turned for comfort to a friend, the Swedenborgian minister Joseph Worcester, who ultimately had a strong influence on Keith's approach to landscape painting.
In 1883 Keith married
Mary McHenry, who was the first female graduate of
Hastings Law School
The University of California, Hastings College of the Law (UC Hastings) is a public law school in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1878 by Serranus Clinton Hastings, UC Hastings was the first law school of the University of California as ...
and a leading
suffragist
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to v ...
.
For their honeymoon, they went on a painting tour of the old
California missions
The Spanish missions in California ( es, Misiones españolas en California) comprise a
series of 21 religious outposts or missions established between 1769 and 1833 in what is now the U.S. state of California. Founded by Catholic priests of ...
. A few months later they traveled to the East Coast and then to Munich, where Keith was determined to learn figure and portrait painting. He primarily worked on his own, occasionally receiving criticism from artists including
Carl von Marr
Carl von Marr (February 14, 1858 – July 10, 1936) was an American-born German painter whose work encompassed religious and mythological subjects, genre, and portraits. He was also a professor of art in Munich.
Biography
He was born in Mi ...
and J. Frank Currier. They returned to San Francisco in mid 1885.
Through Joseph Worcester, Keith met the architect
Daniel Burnham
Daniel Hudson Burnham (September 4, 1846 – June 1, 1912) was an American architect and urban designer. A proponent of the '' Beaux-Arts'' movement, he may have been, "the most successful power broker the American architectural profession has ...
in Chicago while en route to Europe. Burnham became an important patron and agent, showing and selling Keith paintings to collectors in the Chicago area.
In 1886 the Keiths moved into a custom-built house in Berkeley, from where he would commute to his studio in San Francisco each day. That year Keith also cruised Alaska's Inland Passage and sketched some of its glaciers.
Keith painted some portraits on commission and also supplemented his income by giving painting lessons, mostly to women.
[Adams, Elaine. "William Keith (1838–1911): Seeking the Unseen Spiritual Sense in Nature." California Art Club Newsletter, Winter 2011, 1–10. Accessed January 24, 2013.] Among his pupils was the miniaturist
Rosa Hooper and
Leola Hall who painted Keith's portrait.
In 1888 Keith traveled north with Muir, visiting
Mount Shasta
Mount Shasta ( Shasta: ''Waka-nunee-Tuki-wuki''; Karuk: ''Úytaahkoo'') is a potentially active volcano at the southern end of the Cascade Range in Siskiyou County, California. At an elevation of , it is the second-highest peak in the Cascades ...
and
Mount Rainier
Mount Rainier (), indigenously known as Tahoma, Tacoma, Tacobet, or təqʷubəʔ, is a large active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, located in Mount Rainier National Park about south-southeast of Seattle. With a s ...
to create illustrations for Muir's ''Picturesque California''. Muir encouraged Keith to depict mountain scenery realistically, but as Keith's artistic sense had matured, he felt free to depart from geologic reality, placing an imagined glacier or a river in a scene to enhance the beauty of the painting. The two friends argued frequently about such artistic issues. It was said that Muir said, "You never saw a sunrise like that, Keith. Why in the deuce don't you imitate nature?' William would goad Muir by responding, 'Look here now, John, if you'll go out early tomorrow morning and look toward the East you'll see nature imitating my sunrise.".
Keith was part of a group of friends of John Muir who met in San Francisco starting in 1889 to support the establishment of
Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park ( ) is an American national park in California, surrounded on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The park is managed by the National Park Service and covers an ar ...
. This group went on to encourage Muir to establish an association to protect the Sierra Nevada. In 1892, this plan was realized when the
Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is an environmental organization with chapters in all 50 United States, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who be ...
was founded.
Later years
From the late 1880s on, Keith painted primarily in a subjective vein in which his emotional and spiritual reactions to the landscape were more important than topographical facts. He painted many woodland views that resembled those of
Théodore Rousseau
Étienne Pierre Théodore Rousseau (April 15, 1812December 22, 1867) was a French painter of the Barbizon school.
Life
Youth
He was born in Paris, France in a bourgeois family.
At first he received a basic level of training, but soon displaye ...
and other Barbizon painters, as well as the American painter
George Inness
George Inness (May 1, 1825 – August 3, 1894) was a prominent American landscape painter.
Now recognized as one of the most influential American artists of the nineteenth century, Inness was influenced by the Hudson River School at the s ...
. Inness came to visit the San Francisco Bay Area in 1891. He and Keith painted together, and Keith felt he was learning a lot and regaining an enthusiasm for painting that he had begun to lose. Inness's fame and enthusiasm for Keith's work gave a substantial boost to sales of Keith's paintings.
Keith's San Francisco studio was destroyed as a result of the fires following the
1906 San Francisco earthquake
At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...
, which resulted in the loss of many paintings, with some accounts placing the number at several thousand. Keith, who was working primarily from his Berkeley studio-home, promised to replace all of the lost paintings despite his declining health. He remained a revered but reclusive figure in the large Berkeley art colony and refused to participate in the founding of the Berkeley Art Association in 1907.
[ An online facsimile of the entire text of Vol. 1 is posted on the Traditional Fine Arts Organization website (http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/10aa/10aa557.htm).] He consistently contributed paintings to the colony's exhibitions between 1906 and 1911. In the summer of 1906 he briefly appeared in public to support Harry W. Seawell, a drawing instructor at the
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...
, in what became an embarrassing scandal. When the University forbade Seawell from using nude models in his life classes, Keith published a blunt declaration of support in the local press, proclaiming that the nude model is "essential to real art."
Keith did not entirely abandon realistic depictions of mountain scenery. In October 1907, accompanied by Muir, Keith visited and painted the
Hetch Hetchy Valley
Hetch Hetchy is a valley, a reservoir, and a water system in California in the United States. The glacial Hetch Hetchy Valley lies in the northwestern part of Yosemite National Park and is drained by the Tuolumne River. For thousands of years bef ...
in Yosemite National Park, soon to be dammed to create a reservoir to provide water and power for San Francisco.
Linnie Marsh Wolfe wrote that Keith "left behind all his synthetics of the last twenty-five years and humbly, reverently portrayed what he saw, as objectively as in the seventies when Muir first infused into him his own spirit and vision." Keith expressed great annoyance with the many high-quality forgeries of his work on the San Francisco market.
Death
Keith died in his home at 2207 Atherton Street in Berkeley, California, in 1911.
He is buried in plot 14b at
Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.
[
]
Legacy
*Saint Mary's College of California
Saint Mary's College of California is a private Catholic college in Moraga, California. Established in 1863, it is affiliated with the Catholic Church and administered by the De La Salle Brothers. The college offers undergraduate and graduate ...
in Moraga
Moraga is a List of municipalities in California, town in Contra Costa County, California, Contra Costa County, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. The town is named in honor of Joaquín Moraga, member of the famed Californio family. As ...
owns more than 180 paintings by William Keith. The collection was started by Brother Fidelis Cornelius, a Christian Brother who taught art at the college and who wrote a 900-page, 2-volume biography, ''William Keith, Old Master of California.'' Two thematic exhibitions of his work are held each year in the Keith Room of the Saint Mary's College Museum of Art (formerly the Hearst Art Gallery).
*Keith Avenue in Berkeley was named after William Keith.
* Mount Keith was named after William Keith by Helen Gompertz (later Helen LeConte) in July 1896.[
]
*San Francisco Mayor Edward Robeson Taylor
Edward Robeson Taylor (September 24, 1838 – July 5, 1923) was the 28th Mayor of San Francisco, serving from July 16, 1907, to January 7, 1910.
Early life
Edward Robeson Taylor was born on September 24, 1838, in Springfield, Illinois, the onl ...
published an 1898 book of sonnet
A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...
s based on Keith's paintings.
Gallery
Bibliography
Essays online
"An Artist's Trip in the Sierra. Yosemite Valley, July 5th, 1875"
"An Artist's Trip in the Sierra. Second Letter"
* George Wharton James
George Wharton James (27 September 1858 – 8 November 1923) was an American popular lecturer, photographer, journalist and editor. Born in Lincolnshire, England, he emigrated to the United States as a young man after being ordained as a Methodi ...
"William Keith," ''The Craftsman'', vol. 7 (1904), pp. 299ff.
References
Further reading
*Adams, Elaine. "William Keith (1838–1911): Seeking the Unseen Spiritual Sense in Nature." California Art Club Newsletter, Winter 2011, 1–10
Accessed January 24, 2013.
*
*
*
*
*
*Sierra Club Bulletin, 1912
*California: A Guide to the Golden State, by Federal Writers' Project, 1939
External links
Guide to the Keith-McHenry-Pond Family Papers
at The Bancroft Library
The Bancroft Library in the center of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is the university's primary special-collections library. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retai ...
William Keith on artnet
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Keith, William
American landscape painters
Painters from California
Sierra Club people
Tonalism
1838 births
1911 deaths
Burials at Mountain View Cemetery (Oakland, California)
Artists from Berkeley, California
People from Formartine
19th-century American painters
American male painters
20th-century American painters
19th-century Scottish painters
Scottish male painters
20th-century Scottish painters
Artists of the American West
19th-century American male artists
20th-century American male artists
19th-century Scottish male artists
20th-century Scottish male artists
Hudson River School painters