Keppie was born in Glasgow, the fourth son of John Keppie, a wealthy tobacco importer and Helen Cuthbertson Hopkins. Articled, in 1880, to Campbell Douglas and Sellars, he attended classes at both University of Glasgow and the Glasgow School of Art. Three of his siblings including Jessie Keppie also studied art. He also appears to have enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1885, remaining there until 1886. An accomplished draughtsman, he won silver medals in the Tite Prize competitions of 1886 and 1887. He assisted Sellars with the firm's winning entry for the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1888. Following Sellars death in 1888, Keppie went into partnership with John Honeyman, establishing the firm Honeyman and Keppie. Mackintosh joined the firm in 1889 and from the 1890s Keppie appears to have been content to allow him to do most of the designing. It was whilst working for Honeyman and Keppie, who won the competition to design the new Art School building in 1896, that Mackintosh designed his greatest achievement. His design for Martyrs' Public School was also executed during this time. Mackintosh was made partner in 1901, and Keppie returned to design, producing a series of Scots Renaissance buildings throughout Glasgow. He was admitted to the FRIBA in 1904. The partnership with Mackintosh dissolved in 1913. The following year the company won a major competition for the reconstruction of Glasgow Cross. Keppie was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy in 1920, and continued to take an active role in professional matters, particularly as a governor of the Glasgow School of Art. He had been Deacon of the Incorporation of Wrights at the Trades House in 1906 and president of the Glasgow Institute of Architects in 1905, and again in 1919-20. He endowed the John Honeyman Studentships in architecture and in Sculpture in 1923, and did much to promote the career of Benno Schotz. He was president of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland in 1924-26; and as a Council Member of the RIBA he became its vice president in 1929. Keppie's long service as a governor of Glasgow School of Art ended in his chairmanship in 1930-32. He formally retired in 1937. Keppie never married. He died at his home in Prestwick in 1945.
