Current exhibits
Sacred Mountain: Mt. Diablo and Mt. Fuji through July 3, 2009
On opposite sides of the world, these two mountains are a striking part of their respective locales. In Japan, Mount Fuji is a national icon that has become one of the most enduring symbols of that country. Here, Mount Diablo dominates the skyline of Contra Costa County, visible from the San Francisco Bay Area through the low-lying East Bay hills. Many artists have been drawn to these mountains, sometimes for their sheer beauty, other times to bolster historical, spiritual or environmental messages. More...
William Keith: Mountains of Shadow and Light through July 5
Thirteen of William Keith's most beautiful mountain landscape oil paintings are on view from May 2 to July 3, 2009, at the Hearst Art Gallery.
Keith’s love of nature was one of several bonds between him and the great naturalist John Muir, whose friendship was pivotal to the artist’s career. They shared a transcendent view of nature, reveling in its beauty, majesty and mystery. They camped together in the Sierra Nevada range and the Northwest, saw each other when Muir was in the San Francisco area, and helped inspire each other's work. Muir directly influenced many of Keith's early Yosemite scenes, encouraged him to reproduce the precise landscape details, and guided him through some of the West’s most beautiful vistas.
As early as 1872, changes in Keith’s style begin to emerge. While remaining faithful to Muir's ideals that art must be a true representation of nature, Keith also became enthusiastic about a more reflective approach to capturing the natural world on canvas. By the late 1870s Keith had established his reputation as a painter of grand panoramic landscapes, often of the High Sierra or other mountain range, on canvas as large as six by ten feet. These paintings both documented a specific locale and paid homage to divine creation, in the impressive form of the American wilderness.
Shortly after they first met at Yosemite, Muir led Keith past Vernal and Nevada Falls to Tuolumne Meadows via the Old Mono Trail and then to the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne River. When their group started up the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne River, Muir reined his horse aside for the others to get their first view of Mt. Lyell and the crest of the Sierra. Keith wrote, “When we got to Mt. Lyell it was the grandest thing I ever saw. It was late in October. The frost had changed the grasses and a kind of willow to the most brilliant yellows and reds.” Of the same scene, Muir wrote that Keith, his shaggy mane bared, “dashed forward, shouting and gesticulating and waving his arms like a madman.”
Through nearly 40 years of friendship Muir and Keith rejoiced in the spectacular and uplifting natural exuberance of California's grand Sierra Nevada, the Range of Light. Muir, pioneer ecologist, botanist, geologist, glaciologist, one of the founders of the National Parks System and the Sierra Club, taught us the irreplaceable value of wild places. His fortuitous introduction of Keith to the Western vistas captured their majestic beauty on canvas.
*All programming subject to change
The Hearst Art Gallery is accredited by the American Association of Museums
Gallery Hours: Wed. – Sun., 11 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Main Telephone: (925) 631-4379
Website: www.hearstartgallery.org
Media Contact: Heidi Donner, hdonner@stmarys-ca.edu, (925) 631-4069
