William Keith (1838 - 1911) Scotland
Oil on Canvas
Measure 16"in H x 26"in W and 21 3/4"in H x 31 1/2"in W with frame

Known for: Plein-aire landscape painting, history, genre, portrait
Biography: Drawn to Alaska by the urging of his friend John Muir, William Keith took a cruise along its Southeast and South Central coasts in the summer of 1806 to paint landscapes. A year after his return to San Francisco he exhibited at the Bohemian Club the paintings resulting from that trip, including Cordova Bay, Prince William Sound. In the soft-focus image of a quiet cove in the Sound, the color and tonal range is subdued and the paint handled in a loose, sure manner that ignores detail in favor of an overall effect. This painting chronicles a change in the way artists were seeing and dealing with the Alaskan landscape. His 1886 trip to Alaska almost immediately followed Keith's return to America from Munich, where his studies had reinforced his growing desire to paint in a broader, moodier, and more evocative style. He was at this time more influenced by the French Barbizon painters than by his contemporaries Thomas Hill, Albert Bierstadt, and Frederic Church. The late 1880s are sometimes characterized as a watershed period for the painter. It is perhaps significant in this regard that Keith called his 1887 exhibition at the Bohemian Club 'Dreams of Alaska'. As noted in a catalogue of a retrospective of his work: "From this title we are to infer that these paintings are not close transcriptions of actual scenery, but fantasies of a poetical nature inspired by Alaska". If this is true, and the works seem to support such a reading, then Keith's may be the first Alaska paintings to be 'inspired by', rather than simply 'descriptive of' the magnificent Northern Coast landscape. Although others took interpretive liberties, we see in Keith's work the beginnings of a primary interest in capturing on canvas the spirit of the Alaskan landscape as opposed to its topography. Although some time passed before Keith's example was followed and expanded, it represents a major break from the documentary tradition in landscape painting of Alaska.

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