Dutch Influences in William Keith's Portraits
Keith, Munich, the Alte Pinakothek and Dutch Painting
In September of 1883 Keith and his new bride, Mary McHenry Keith, left for New York and New England, with a side trip to the Corcoran Museum in Washington, D.C. In October they embarked for Antwerp and arrived in Munich in early November. Keith studied portraiture with the same intensity and diligence. He also saw an emerging market of patrons in San Francisco who wanted their portraits painted. Keith has struck up a friendship with a younger San Francisco artist, Theodore Wores, who has just returned from Munich, and spoke with enthusiasm about the American artists flocking there to study and train.
Keith greatly admired Frank Duveneck (1848 – 1919), American impressionist portrait artist. The Kentucky born son of German immigrants studied and later taught in Munich and at the Cincinnati Academy of Art. He was drawn to Duveneck’s dramatic, dark and direct style of painting, influenced by Franz Hals and Rembrandt. By the time Keith arrived in Munich, Duveneck had returned to the States, so Keith sought out the critique of other influential American expatriate painters Carl Marr and J. Frank Currier.
His letters home speak of his time admiring Dutch art in European museums. In the Alte Pinakothek and the Louvre, Keith admired the works of Rembrandt, Hals, Van Dyck, Van Ruisdael, and Hobbema. He was in awe of the luminous seventeenth century Dutch landscapes, and the intimacy they seemed to create between viewer and the painting. Their manipulation of light and dark and suggestion of melancholy suited his desire to express spirituality and the presence of a higher power in man and nature. Suddenly, the epic paintings of Bierstadt and Church seemed theatrical and false to Keith. He hired models - men, women, children, and elderly – for daily poses, many of them in costume. His Munich landscapes are impacted by his portrait study: smaller, darker, and with bolder, freer and richer brushstrokes.
Keith returned to Californian in May of 1885, where he was immediately in demand in his new role as a portrait painter. Among his subjects were Collis P. Huntington and Edward H. Harriman, railroad magnates, Charles Edward Blake, Warren Olney and Irving Scott, prominent members of the business, legal and medical communities, Joseph Le Conte, Rowland Sill, George Davidson, Jane K. Sather and Darius Ogden Mills, U C Berkeley professors and benefactors. Keith also painted John Muir’s daughter, Wanda, and Muir’s in-laws, the Strentzels. He continued to paint landscapes during the late 1880s; his interest in portraiture waned by 1890, perhaps as the demand for commissions subsided. In his later years he was persuaded to paint Joaquin Miller’s mother, a hardy and homely pioneer woman. Although he took the commission reluctantly, it may be the most original, powerful and realistic portrait he ever painted.
Throughout his career, Keith’s artistic exploration and myriad of influences – people, places, and styles - informed his synthesized, but unique style. His experimentation, accumulated knowledge of art and increasing self-awareness places Keith in the canon of great Western painters.
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: http://gallery.stmarys-ca.edu
Media Contact: Heidi Donner, hdonner@stmarys-ca.edu, (925) 631-4069
