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International studio — 33.1907/​1908(1908)

DOI Heft:
No. 129 (November, 1907)
DOI Artikel:
Atkins, Henry: William Keith, landscape painter, of California
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.28253#0057

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William Keith of California


“andante”

(In the possession of Miss Lena Blanding)

BY WILLIAM KEITH

Among the examples of his work that have
crossed the Atlantic are those belonging to
Mr. Stopford Brooke, and the large Sunset among
the Oaks, now in the Frankfort Gallery, presented
by Mr. Jacob Schiff, who in his private collection
in New York owns several other canvases. Here
also Mr. Keith’s paintings may be seen in the
galleries of Mr. E. H. Harriman, Senator Clarke,
Mr. Francis Burton Harrison, the late Collis P.
Huntington, Mr. McKim and Mr. D. H. Burnham,
in the Art Museum of Chicago and Brooklyn, and
in the Corcoran Gallery at Washington. Occa-
sionally he produces a canvas treated alprimo in a
high, clear key, such as the mountain composition
The Crown of the Sierras, a reproduction of which
is given here, but his favourite palette is a low rich
chord of greens and browns, with rose and amber
notes and glazes A generic title for the most
typical of his compositions might be A Wooded
Landscape. Richly modelled masses of foliage,
oak, madrona or eucalyptus, serve to throw into
distance some clear sky stained with the hues of
dawn or sunset, and reflected in the foreground

from pool or flowing stream. The suggestion of
“ the human interest ” by skilfully placed landscape,
painters’ figures of lonely shepherds, or groups of
children playing in the woodland shadows, is
hardly needed, for on his canvas the most lonely
and withdrawn places seem to hint at some hidden
presence, some occupation of personality, felt
rather than seen.
It is evident that his adopted country has had
its share of influence upon the far-brought germ of
art in William Keith. The echoes of tradition were
sweet but dim in his ears, and around him were
calling the voices of a new age—around him lay an
untrodden region of beauty, to which vibrated all
the chords of romance, and which stirred the deep
and still waters of the Scottish heritage of imagina-
tion. Even as the deciduous avenues of Fontaine-
bleau imparted a melancholy sweetness to the
canvases of 1830, and the grey coasts and filtered
sunlight of Scotland temper the low harmonies of
the Glasgow palette, so in Keith’s work we recog-
nise the influence of that very close and familiar
spirit of nature in the West—young, romantic, and
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