Brief Biography-William Keith was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1838. The family moved to New York in 1850, and nine years later, he settled in San Francisco. Keith studied under Samuel Marsden Brooks, a still-life painter, and visited Europe, gaining inspiration from Andreas Achenbach in Düsseldorf and the Barbizon school in Paris. Later in America, he married for a second time, settled in Berkeley, and set up an art class, giving painting lessons to women. Unfortunately, many of his works perished during the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, but he continued to paint when touring Yosemite National Park with his friend John Muir, the environmentalist. Keith died in 1911 in Berkeley. There is a dedicated room with his works at Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art in California.