William Keith (artist)
| William Keith | |
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 William Keith, 1909 |
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| Born | November 18, 1838 Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire, Scotland |
| Died | April 13, 1911 (aged 72) Berkeley, California |
| Resting place | Mountain View Cemetery, plot 14b |
| Nationality | Scotland |
| Education | Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (1869-1870) |
| Occupation | Painter |
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William Keith (November 18, 1838 – April 13, 1911) was a Scottish-American painter famous for his California landscapes. He is associated with Tonalism and the American Barbizon school. 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.
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Early life [edit]
Keith was born in Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and emigrated to the United States in 1850. He lived in New York City, and became an apprentice wood engraver in 1856. He first traveled to the American West in 1858, after being assigned to do illustrations for Harper's Magazine. He moved to England briefly, working for the London Daily News.
One of the common misconceptions surrounding the upbringing of William Keith is the notion that he was born into nobility.[2] This misconception primarily stems from the role that the Keith surname has played historically. However, there is no direct evidence that would tie Keith to the feudal family of the same last name.[3] More likely, he came from much humbler origins, which is in keeping with his image of a self-made man.
"What I want to do is to study nature. The best way to do that is to be near her, and I have vague ideas about living in such close communion with her that she may adopt me and show me things hidden to every eye but that which loves her sincerely."
"My subjective pictures are the ones that come from the inside. I feel some emotion and I immediately paint a picture that expresses it. The sentiment is the only thing of real value in my pictures, and only a few people understand that. Suppose I want to paint something recalling meditation or repose. If people do not feel that sensation when my work is completed, they do not appreciate nor realize the picture. The fact that they like it means nothing. Any one who can use paint and brushes can paint a true scene of nature — that is an objective picture. The artist must not depend on extraneous things. There is no reality in his art if he must depend on outside influences — it must come from within."
California [edit]
Keith moved to California in 1859, settling in San Francisco, where he went into the engraving business. He first studied painting with Samuel Marsden Brookes in 1863, and took watercolor instruction from Elizabeth Emerson, whom he married in 1864.[4] Keith decided to end his engraving career in 1868 in order to pursue paniting when he received a commission from the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1868 to paint landscape pictures of scenes along its tracks and promote the railroad.[5]
He studied art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1869 and 1870. Upon his return to the United States, he shared a studio in Boston with William Hahn from 1871 to 1872.[6]
In 1885 Keith bought a house in Berkeley and would commute to his studio in San Francisco each day. Keith enjoyed giving painting lessons on top of selling his own pieces because he liked to make sure he had a steady income. He mostly gave lessons to women, and rarely gave them to men however, because he enjoyed the company of women more.[7]
Friendship with John Muir [edit]
Keith then returned to California, and traveled to Yosemite Valley, with a letter of introduction to John Muir. 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."[8]
His first wife Elizabeth died in 1882. In 1883 Keith married Mary McHenry Keith (1855–1947), who was the first female graduate of Hastings Law School and a leading suffragette.[9]
In 1888, Keith traveled north with Muir, visiting Mount Shasta and Mount Rainier. Muir encouraged Keith to depict mountain scenery realistically, but as Keith's artistic sense 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.[10] Keith and Muir did in fact compliment each other. It was said that "Muir's concern with scientific accuracy reinforced Keith's early training as a wood engraver in encouraging him to reproduce the exact topography and details of a landscape early in his career".[11] But it is true that they had some difference, 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.".[7]
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. 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 was founded.[12]
In October 1907, accompanied by Muir, he visited and painted the Hetch Hetchy Valley 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."[13]
Painting style and influence [edit]
William Keith began studying art under the apprenticeship of New York wood engraver William Roberts in 1856. Keith was first employed as an engraver by Harpers Magazine in 1858 and the London Daily News in 1859. Keith left engraving in 1868 to pursue painting. His first works were watercolors, which he sold in an art shop in San Francisco called Alta California and in an exhibition in the Museum Hall of Mercantile Library Building. He and his wife, Elizabeth Emerson, left the US in 1870 to study oil painting in Düsseldorf and the in Paris in May. At the end of 1870, Keith returned to the US and briefly stayed in Maine, then Boston.[3]
Landscape Painting [edit]
He returned to California in 1872 where he presented himself and a letter of introduction to John Muir, who would lead him on expeditions through the Sierra Nevada. Keith’s painting style started off influenced by his time in Europe, which focused on a more realistic approach to landscape painting.[3] Keith demonstrates his competency with such oil paintings in colorful and impressive western United States landscape panoramas, perhaps Keith’s most significant and renowned accomplishments as an artist. A particular wildlife display of Keith’s, similar to many other western landscape scenes, Upper Kern River[14] exhibits common themes of his painting style and artistic strategy with concern to his oil painting renditions of undomesticated wildlife. An important note, sometimes unrealized about the nature of his artwork, is the large canvas sizes, [Upper Kern River: 91.80x183.83 cm] [15] which he frequently portrayed these settings on. This is important to recognize because the viewer can develop a heightened sense of appreciation for the artwork after he or she comes to realize the fantastic attention to detail that was accomplished by Keith even on such a grand scale. The beauty of wildlife is conveyed through the aesthetic appeal created through the depiction of terrains that are shown as wild, flowing, and untamed by human interference. The artwork developed in this period of Keith’s life adhered rather strictly to technical detail; paying particular attention to shading, color, and scaled proportions. The light colored hues that Keith utilized convey a surreal element to the nature scenes in his landscape paintings. The fact that these landscape portrayals of the western United States countryside are accurate representations of settings that still exist in the modern day,[16] enables us to still experience the same settings that Keith maintained during these painting's artistic productions. Considering the strong bond and documented aforementioned friendship with John Muir, as well as Keith's affiliation as Co-Founder of the Sierra Club, we can assume that he had a great appreciation for the landscapes that he so masterfully depicted.
"What a landscape painter wants to render is not the natural landscape, but the state of feeling which the landscape produces in himself."
"There is the suggestion... we cannot see the cow, her hoofs. her horns, and her tail, but she is there.I can see her...every detail is worked out. I will sell that without any trouble.The buyer will look at it; see just exactly what it is and his intelligence is flattered. He has understood. He is wise. He is critic. He is a buyer. How few people really know what a sketch means to a painter who produces it."
Portraiture [edit]
After the death of his wife in 1882, Keith moved to Munich to study portraiture. Instead of directly enrolling in the academy, Keith rented a studio and started painting on his own.[17]
Return to Landscape [edit]
Keith’s time in Munich exposed him to the “Stimmungslandschaft” or “mood painting” style used by Carl Schuch, Wilhelm Trubner, and Frank Duveneck. The mood painting style focused on expressing the emotions of the scenery over detail and visual accuracy. Keith briefly returned to watercolor painting to experiment in this style. An example of Keith’s own mood painting is Gray Rain Cloud, Cattle in Meadow (late 1880s). Keith left Munich in May 1885 when he visited Paris till he returned to San Francisco in July. Keith continued to paint portraits, topographical landscapes, and mood paintings of landscapes predominately in oil paintings.[17]
Keith's paintings started to become more suggestive of a mood rather than describing a particular place until he met George Inness in 1891. When Inesss came out to San Francisco, he and Keith adapted a friendship and spent some time traveling and painting together in Keith's studio. This new friendship with Inness made Keith realize he needed to rethink his techniques and go back to interpreting nature's spiritual essence.[7]
Death [edit]
Keith died in his home in Berkeley, California. He is buried in plot 14b at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.[9]
Legacy [edit]
- Saint Mary's College of California in Moraga 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).[18]
- Keith Avenue in Berkeley was named after William Keith.[19]
- Mount Keith was named after William Keith by Helen Gompertz (later Helen LeConte) in July 1896.[20]
- San Francisco Mayor Edward Robeson Taylor published an 1898 book of sonnets based on Keith's paintings.[21]
Gallery [edit]
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: William Keith Paintings |
| Selected Artwork by William Keith | |||||||||
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References [edit]
- ^ http://www.mundia.com/us/Person/669948/164976655
- ^ The Art Institute of Chicago. Exhibition of Paintings by the Late William Keith. Accessed February 5, 2013. http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924016509816#page/n3/mode/2up.
- ^ a b c Neuhaus, Eugen. William Keith, the Man and the Artist. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1938.
- ^ "Taos & Santa Fe Painters: William Keith (1838 - 1911)". Retrieved 9 September 2010.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Trainer, Laureen (2006). In Scott, Amy. Yosemite: Art of an American Icon. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. p. 201. ISBN 0-520-24922-4.
- ^ a b c 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.
- ^ Clarke, James Mitchell (1980). The Life and Adventures of John Muir. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. p. 112. ISBN 87156-241-3 Check
|isbn=value (help). - ^ a b Michael Colbruno (2008-04-28). "Lives of the Dead: Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland". Archived from the original on 2010-01-27. Retrieved 2010-02-15.
- ^ Wolfe, Linnie Marsh (1945). Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press & Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. pp. 238–261. ISBN 0-299-07734-9.
- ^ "William Keith Collection | Saint Mary's College." William Keith Collection | Saint Mary's College. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2013.
- ^ Cohen, Michael P. (1988). The History of the Sierra Club 1992-1970. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. p. 8. ISBN 0-87156-732-6.
- ^ Wolfe, Linnie Marsh (1945). Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press & Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. p. 309. ISBN 0-299-07734-9.
- ^ http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7033/6411632527_b71ba82bde_z.jpg
- ^ Benezit Dictionary of British Graphic Artists and Illustrators. 2012.
- ^ http://www.whitewatervoyages.com/gallery/images/fullsize/Upper-kern-river01_fs.jpg
- ^ a b Harrison, Alfred. William Keith: The Saint Mary’s College Collection. Saint Mary’s College of California, 1988.
- ^ "William Keith Collection". St. Mary's College of California. Retrieved 29 April 2012.
- ^ William Warren Ferrier (1923-12-27). "Berkeley Street Nomenclature". Berkeley Daily Gazette (Berkeley, California). p. 6. Retrieved 2010-02-15.
- ^ Farquhar, Francis P. (1926). Place Names of the High Sierra. San Francisco: Sierra Club. Retrieved 2009-01-21.
- ^ Edward Robeson Taylor (1898), Sonnets of Edward Robeson Taylor on some pictures painted by William Keith (Sonnets of Edward Robeson Taylor on some pictures painted by William Keith. ed.), San Francisco: Printed by the E.D. Taylor Co.
- Sierra Club bulletin, by Sierra Club, 1912
- California A Guide to the Golden State, by Federal Writers' Project, 1939
External links [edit]
- Guide to the Keith-McHenry-Pond Family Papers at The Bancroft Library
- William Keith on artnet
- William Keith's Yosemite Valley at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
- 1913 Exhibition Book from Art Institute of Chicago, with Bio & Painting images/descriptions
- Sierra Nevada Chronicles Bio & Paintings
- William Keith Biography
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