William Keith was born on November 21, 1839 in Old Meldrum, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, the son of William Keith and Elizabeth Brucc. On his father's side he is said to have descended from the earls marischal of Scotland. In his boyhood he emigrated to America with his parents.
Keith attended school in New York City and later he became an apprentice wood engraver in 1856. He first studied painting with Samuel Marsden Brookes in 1863. In 1869-1871 he spent time in Düsseldorf, studying under Albert Flamm. About 1883 he traveled to Munich, where he learned figure and portrait painting.
Keith began his artistic career as an engraver for the Harper publications. In 1859 he went to California, becoming fascinated with the mountains, the Pacific, and the slopes to the sea. He first made sketches in black and white and then began to paint landscapes. He was employed for a time by the Northern Pacific Railroad to paint some of the characteristic scenes along its route.
For a period in the eighties he lived in New Orleans. In 1893 he visited Spain, where he became "enamored of the Spanish painters. " In California he became one of that famous trio of nature lovers, which included John Burroughs and John Muir. Together they tramped the hills. It was said of Keith that there was "scarcely a mountain in three-fourths of California" on which he had not "kept vigil for days at a time, studying every detail of color, flower, rock, forge, shadow and sunshine". His landscapes are painted with a wealth of color in sunsets and morning skies. His redwood pictures are especially beautiful, giving vivid impressions of California scenery. The visit of George Inness to California in 1890 brought together two men who had much in common, through their art, though their methods were radically different. Inness went west for his health and for many weeks he made Keith's studio over the old California Street Market his headquarters. His influence thereafter was apparent in Keith's painting.
In his old age and in ill health he made his annual trip to the Yosemite. His home in Berkeley was the center of intellectual sociability, a meeting place for professors of the university and distinguished writers and artists. His studio adjoined the campus, with its live oaks which so often appeared in his canvases. His work recalls, in composition, the manner of the painters of the Barbizon School--Diaz, Corot, and Dupré--but he was absolutely original and he interpreted the beauty of the country with poetic understanding. His "Glory of the Heavens" sold at auction in San Francisco for $12, 000. A sale of thirty canvases at the Anderson Galleries in New York in 1916 brought $30, 800. He is represented in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Gallery in Washington, in the Chicago Art Institute, in the Brooklyn Institute, and in many private galleries. A large collection of his pictures was exhibited at the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915.
Keith's first wife was Elizabeth Emerson, an artist, whom he married in 1865. His second wife was Mary McHenry, daughter of Judge William McHenry, a jurist of New Orleans. She was the first woman graduate of the Hastings College of Law.
