California Landscapes

I learned about California landscape painter, William Keith (1838 – 1911), while on the Artists and Architects tour at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. According to Michael Colbruno, in his blog post “William Keith, Painter & Mary McHenry Keith, Suffragette & Legal Pioneer”, Keith was born in Scotland and moved to San Francisco in 1859. He became a leading and prosperous landscape artist, and lifelong friend of John Muir, who shared his love of the California landscape. He married Mary McHenry Keith (1855-1947), who was the first female graduate of Hastings Law School and a prominent suffragette.

William Keith Gallery

About two thousand of Keith’s paintings were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire, but a good collection is now housed in the Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art. A small collection of paintings is displayed on a rotating basis, and the complete collection is posted online. Keith painted people and places all over California and the San Francisco Bay Area, and even painted a couple of landscapes in Southeast Alaska (see 1886 - 1892).

William Keith, Oak Forest With Three Figures, 1906-1911

My husband and I spent a pleasant afternoon earlier this year, driving out to Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, and viewing the current pieces on display. They reminded me of the Italian landscape paintings that inspired the Landscape Movement in the 1600s and 1700s, but with California vegetation and geology. The paintings capture the California landscape of a bygone era, before so much growth and development. Afterward we stopped at Bianca’s Deli for sandwiches and conversation, surrounded by students from Saint Mary’s College.



William Keith, Glacial Meadow and Lake, High Sierra (Tuolumne Meadows), 1870s or early 1880s