The San Francisco call., 1895-10-12

seventy or eighty of the best of Keith s
unsold works, most of them finely framed
and displayed on the walls, mantels and
easels. Draperies, a few palms, decorative
bits here and there and pretty rugs add to
the effect. The largest of the rooms is
filled with four or FIVE hundred unframed
pictures and unmounted sketches and
studies.
Keith's idea is to make his place a gall
lery of California scenes and he has opened
it with the special view of receiving Eastern
and foreign visitors who may have become
charmed by the peculiar natural beauties
of California. 1t is an interesting putting
forward of another distinctively California
product. Keith has acquired considerable
fame as painter of the mountains, waters,
forests and oaks of California and he pro-
poses to still more notably CO pie his
name with California scenery. His gallery
and studio will not be open indiscrimi-
nately to the public. Admission will be
supposed to be by invitation or introduc-
ton. G. P. Huntington is one of the Wis
itors who has called within the past few
days.
This is the first time any body has been
able to see large number of Keith S
works together. While there is much
variety in the work displayed, one will
quickly recognize four classes of subjects
especially typical of Keith. For many
Sierras, generally in company with John
Muir, and his studies of sublime, snow
covered heights, nesting mountain lakes,
tumbllng mountain streams, the Yosemite
and Shasta, are among his best works.
One of the most striking and masterful
mountain scenes that he has portrayed is
that OF Castle Crags at sunset finished but
few weeks ago. 1t is wonderful and
charming piece of coloring.
The va1lpvc 1ain an5 M douys Of ba
interior of the State have charmed Keith
at some periods of his career, and many of
his paintings portray in delightful perfec-
tion of color the tawny yellows and browns
In which autumn clothes California land
scape, and the fresh green of the spring
time in field, pasture and meadow.
His sturdy and picturesque California
oaks have in recent years become espe-
cially familiar and he has a number of
these on exhibition.
Now Keith has taken up the redwoods
and several finished pictures are exhibited
The distinctive glories and beauties of the
redwoods were but recently revealed to
him, and now they absorb his interest and
ambition. He sees them as no other
painter has seen them, and he expresses
with mastery skill their wonderful color
tones and the poetry of nature that thew
reveal in every phase. In both his oaks
and his redwoods a difference NAV be
noted between his first and his later work
with these subjects. His first pictures
show more fidelity to the outline and de-
tail of what he has seen and the later work
shows more of his peculiar impressionist
style of treatment and expresses more the
poetic spirit and feeling that has filled him.
The hundreds of canvases that Keith
has now dragged together from various
places of storage and sorted where there is
room to see and sort them are evidence of
an exceedingly industrious career. when
l see them all together l am astonished
myself at the amount of work I've DONE"
said Keith yesterday.
There are pastels, india-ink sketches.
half-tinished paintings, water colors,
sketches and studies in oil and water
colors, ETC., that have been accommodating
for nearly thirty years. Scores of them
had not been seen by the artist himself for
ten years. They were made at various
times all over California, in Switzerland,