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A 19th-century leading artist and visionary in San Francisco, 威廉·基思(1838-1911)最为人所知的是他通过绘画和画笔保护和分享加州的风景. 十大正规网赌平台艺术博物馆关心这位加州风景画家大师创作的最全面的作品. 

KEITH AND MUIR

1872年，基思带着一封介绍信来到缪尔在约塞米蒂山谷的小屋, and a lifelong friendship quickly developed. The two Scottish immigrants took camping trips together in the High Sierra, saw each other when Muir was in San Francisco, and helped inspire each other's work. 成立塞拉俱乐部的想法最初是在基思的工作室与穆尔博士的谈话中形成的. Joseph LeConte, the first president of the University of California, and Warren Olney, a prominent San Francisco attorney. 

穆尔对科学准确性的关注加强了基思作为木雕师的早期训练，鼓励他在职业生涯早期复制景观的精确地形和细节. 到1870年，基思也已经表达了“完全向自然学习”的倾向," reflecting in part the admonishments of the influential writer John Ruskin.

KEITH'S ARTISTIC TRANSITIONS

Although there was a general trend in Keith's work, 从紧密工作的细节和明亮的阳光到更广泛的笔触和黄昏的场景, his path was not a simple, straightforward one. It seems to have reflected a waxing and waning of various influences, including his personal predilections and moods, art market forces, an interest in the "old masters" (especially Rembrandt), and allegiances to friends of different persuasions about art.

Two lengthy sojourns in Europe, each bracketed by visits to the eastern United States, had particularly strong effects on Keith's artistic development. In 1869, three years after he first began exhibiting and selling paintings, 他离开旧金山前往纽约和巴黎，并在杜塞尔多夫学习艺术, Germany. 到1872年他回到旧金山时，他的绘画风格已经发生了很大的变化. 丰富的前景细节是早期作品的典型特征，比如圣拉斐尔附近的圣安塞尔莫山谷，已经被更松散的取代, sketchier brushstrokes as in Mount Lyell, California Sierra. 虽然仍然相信约翰·罗斯金的教导，艺术必须是自然的忠实呈现, 基思热衷于用一种更“暗示性”的方式在画布上捕捉自然世界. His European experience had consisted more of looking at art, talking with artists, and painting on his own rather than of formal art education. He did not enroll in the Dusseldorf Academy, 他似乎更受法国巴比松艺术的影响，而不是与杜塞尔多夫有关的传统, where Albert Bierstadt, Worthington Whittredge, and Sanford Gifford had studied earlier. The popularity of "modern" French painting in Boston, where Keith spent several months in 1871-72, may have reinforced this direction.

Keith's second trip to Europe centered around a stay in Munich in 1883-85. 在那里，他又主要从事勤奋的自学，专注于肖像画. Polemics is an example of the portraits he painted in Munich. He later was commissioned to paint portraits of various prominent Californians, but his mainstay continued to be landscape.

可能是受到慕尼黑周围工作的德国和美国风景画家的影响(他们是法国巴比松艺术的崇拜者), 1885年以后，基思的风景画在笔法上变得更加松散，效果也更加多变. He also painted some watercolors, such as "Gray Rain Cloud" and "Cattle in Meadow" in his post-Munich years, 回到他在接触油画之前开始绘画的媒介.

In the 1870s, Keith had established his reputation as a painter of grand panoramic landscapes, often of the High Sierra or other mountainous countries, and sometimes as large as six by ten feet. 这种类型的绘画既可以作为特定地区的文件，也可以以令人印象深刻的美国荒野的形式向神圣的创造致敬. By the 1890s, Keith typically painted forest glades at sunset, with other kinds of religious overtones. Evening Glow is a rather dramatic example. 和东方画家乔治·英尼斯一样，基思成为了斯威登堡主义的信徒. He believed that his late, dark, 模糊的作品更好地暗示了超越自然表面形式的精神现实.

Although he was best known in California, Keith's achievements were noted in East Coast newspapers as early as 1872. Keith had a studio in Boston for several months, and as late as April 1911, 纽约艺术品交易商威廉·麦克白在《十大正规网赌平台》上发表了《十大网赌平台》.

A prominent New York art collector, architect Charles F. McKim, met Keith in 1905. According to the San Francisco Wasp, he said,

“我参观了这位旧金山艺术家的工作室，这给了我一生的惊喜. I had heard of Keith, of course, and knew that he did good work, but I was wholly unprepared for what I saw. As I glanced around the studio, I was amazed and puzzled, for I observed pictures that, at first cursory glance, 多比尼，柯罗，米勒和其他公认的山水画中诗意情绪的大师. 但这些画没有一幅是那些著名艺术家的复制品. 一个新的大师出现了，他可以触摸所有他们熟悉的琴键，并以自己的方式使用它们，在他的作品中留下自己的个性. And such perfect and admirable work! Well, I bought $15,000 worth of it in ten minutes."

The great naturalist John Muir called William Keith a "poet-painter," referring to the lyrical quality in Keith's art. As with his contemporaries George Inness, Winslow Homer, and Albert Pinkham Ryder, 基思的风格逐渐从对特定地点的精确描述演变为利用景观元素来表达和唤起情感. 他对大自然的热爱贯穿了他的绘画生涯，也是他和约翰·缪尔之间的几个纽带之一, the founder of the Sierra Club and "father" of the National Parks system.

KEITH'S FIRST BIOGRAPHER, BROTHER CORNELIUS, F.S.C.

It was the spiritual qualities of Keith's works, an appreciation for his artistic and scholarly rigor, 以及对加州山脉的共同热爱，让菲德里斯·科尼利厄斯·布雷格修士, F.S.C., of Saint Mary's College, to make Keith the subject of much of his life's work. 这位基督教兄弟会的艺术教授在1908年拜访缪尔在马丁内斯的家中时第一次看到了基思的画. Brother Cornelius, who was also an artist and an avid mountaineer, interviewed scores of Keith's friends, relatives, and fellow artists, 阅读当时报纸上的报道，并到基思最喜欢的西部景点旅行.  He later wrote a 900-page biography of Keith, collected more than 100 of Keith's paintings and gave them to the College, and organized several Keith exhibitions. 他的遗产继续存在于正在进行的研究、出版和艺术品保护中.