William Keith was born in Aberdeen, Scotland on Nov. 21, 1838. In 1850, Keith immigrated with his family to New York and as a teenager, he apprenticed as a wood engraver. In approximately 1858, he came to San Francisco as an employee of Harper Brothers publishers. Following this assignment, he visited Scotland and then worked in England for the London Daily News.
In 1859, he returned to San Francisco. He went to work in the engraving shop of Harrison Eastman and later established his own engraving business with Durbin Van Vleck at 611 Clay Street. In 1863, Keith became interested in painting and first studied with Samuel Brookes. The following year he married artist Elizabeth Emerson and, under her tutelage, began painting in watercolor. In 1868 he gave up engraving and devoted his time to painting.
The following year the Keiths went to Düsseldorf where he studied with Flamm and Achenbach. When they returned to the U.S. they had a studio in Boston which they shared with artist William Hahn In 1872, they returned to San Francisco and joined the Bohemian Club and began exhibiting.
Keith met naturalist John Muir who took him into the most remote parts of Yosemite, taught him the names of the trees and plants, and thoroughly acquainted him with nature's wonders. But at the same time as he was painting alpine panoramas, Keith also focused on the more intimate landscapes of the French Barbizon movement that had come to the forefront of Parisian art appreciation during the 1860s. Barbizon painters adopted a more natural and impressionistic style than that of the academic painters; their works often communicate a rougher and stronger presence of nature than sweeter, more sentimental academic landscapes.
In 1882, Elizabeth Keith died and one year later he married Mary McHenry who was the first woman to graduate from Hastings Law School. In 1883, Keith made his second trip to Europe to study portraiture with Carl Marr in Munich for three years. Shortly after returning to California, the Keiths moved to Berkeley into a home at 2207 Atherton where Keith was to live until his demise on April 13, 1911. His life's work can be divided into two periods: his early works are often mountain epics in descriptive realism as espoused by the Düsseldorf School; whereas, the paintings done during the last two decades of his life are more closely akin to those of the Barbizon painters. Keith focused on the more intimate landscapes of the French Barbizon movement that had come to the forefront of Parisian art appreciation during the 1860s during his last visit to Europe. Barbizon painters adopted a more natural and impressionistic style than that of the academic painters; their works often communicate a rougher and stronger presence of nature than sweeter, more sentimental academic landscapes. His later paintings are darker, smaller and more intimate with emphasis on mood. Keith commuted daily by ferry to his San Francisco studio and many of his later works are pastoral landscapes of Berkeley with oak trees, cows, and ponds which he sketched en route. He painted nearly 4,000 oil paintings of which almost 2,000 burned in the fire that was started after the earthquake of 1906. He has been called "Dean of California Artists" and "California's Old Master." Honors accorded Keith include an entire room devoted to his work at the Panama Pacific International Expo (in San Francisco) of 1915; the Keith Gallery was opened in 1934 at St Mary's College in Moraga; and in 1956 the William Keith Memorial Gallery opened at the Oakland Public Library. Streets in Oakland and Berkeley are named for him. He was a celebrated figure in the art world during his lifetime and received numerous awards and medals from all over the country and internationally as well
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Source:
Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
From Frontier to Fire; Bay of San Francisco; California Art Research, 20 volumes; New York Historical Society's Dictionary of Artists in America (Groce, George C. and David H. Wallace); History & Ideals of American Art (Neuhaus); Keith, Old Master of California (Brother Cornelius); Art in California (R. L. Bernier, 1916); Art News, 4-22-1911 (obituary).
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