A native of Scotland, William Keith became in the late 19th and early 20th centuries a leading Northern-California landscape artist. In fact, he was so well known that he is referred to as the "Dean of California painters." His romanticized views of nature found much favor among the culturally aspiring citizens of San Francisco and hung in many foyers and dining rooms in their elegant homes. He completed thousands of paintings and drawings, and many of them were lost in his studio in the fire of 1906.

His early works are dramatic mountainscapes in a realistic style adopted from the Dusseldorf School of Germany. The paintings of the last two decades of his life are looser and obviously influenced by h...