Charles Christian Nahl

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Charles Christian Nahl

Charles Christian Nahl (born October 18, 1818 in Cassel , † March 1, 1878 in San Francisco , California ; also called Carl Christian Heinrich Nahl, Charles Nahl, Karl Nahl, or Charles C. Nahl ) was a German-American painter .

After emigrating to the United States, Nahl was described as the "first major Californian artist". He devoted himself to different artistic genres .

Life

Miners in the Sierras , Charles Christian Nahl and Frederick August Wenderoth from the years 1850/51

Nahl came from a family that since the 17th century had repeatedly produced important artists in the fields of interior design , sculpture and visual representation of all kinds. His great-grandfather was the sculptor Johann August Nahl the Elder and his grandfather the sculptor and painter Johann August Nahl the Younger . Several of his ancestors held professorships at the Kassel Art Academy or even headed it.

The apparently very talented Carl Christian Heinrich (baptismal name) was already considered a accomplished watercolorist at the age of 12 . He also studied at the Kassel Art Academy . The economic situation and the political unrest caused him to leave his hometown Kassel in 1846 with his family and his friend, the artist Frederick August Wenderoth (* 1819 in Kassel; † 1884 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) and move to Paris . His half-brother Hugo Wilhelm Arthur Nahl (1833–1889), who later also became known as a painter, illustrator and graphic artist and accompanied Carl Christian on all of his subsequent stages, was there with him. In Paris, Carl took the name Charles, studied with Paul Delaroche and Horace Vernet and exhibited his works in the famous Salon de Paris . The political turmoil of the French February Revolution drove the trio out again. They left France and took a ship to the USA in 1848/1849 .

In America

Little Miss San Francisco by Charles Christian Nahl and August Wenderoth from 1853 (Oakland Museum)

The call of the California gold rush reached them in New York . Like thousands of others, they booked a ship passage that took them through the Isthmus of Panama to the west coast of the United States. In May 1851 they drove through the Golden Gate and reached San Francisco . In the Yuba River area near Sacramento they tried a few months to get rich by discovering gold. Nahl began sketching the miners who paid for their portraits with gold dust. However, the dream of gold wealth did not materialize. Nahl opened a painting studio with his brother Arthur and Wenderoth in Sacramento and made a living doing lithographs and illustrations for the local newspaper and magazines. In 1852 a fire destroyed most of Sacramento. Nahl moved on to San Francisco, opened a new studio and from then on devoted himself to painting and commercial commissions with his brother Hugo and artist friend August Wenderoth. The artistic collaboration with Wenderoth is documented in the paintings Miner's Cabin, Result of the Day and Miners in the Sierra .

Sunday Morning in the Mines by Charles Christian Nahl from 1872

From 1853 created many, sometimes in the style of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres worked Portrait , in collaboration with his brother Arthur, who served as an assistant. “We work like a workshop; Carl paints the heads, I paint the clothes ... ” wrote Arthur in 1853 to Wilhelm Nahl in Kassel. However, this “mass production” was also responsible for the inconsistency and lack of liveliness in many of the works. The dramatic painting Fire in San Francisco Bay from 1856 also emerged from the collaboration between the two brothers, whom the Americans briefly referred to as "The Nahl Brothers". In addition, prints were also made , such as the woodcut " Grizzly ", which was published in Hutching's Illustrated California Magazine (Vol 1, No. 3, p. 106).

Between the 1860s and 1870s, Charles Christian Nahl was one of the most successful painters in California . His academic, European style was valued and the paintings with the motifs he drew from literature , history and classical mythology were a preferred feature of the villas of prominent families. Among his greatest patrons was the Sacramento art collector Edwin Bryant Crocker , who was known as a lover of European painting. The work he acquired is now in the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento.

Charles Christian Nahl died of typhus on March 1, 1878 in San Francisco.

Works

Untitled by Charles Christian Nahl from 1869

Charles Christian Nahl created numerous drawings and paintings of wild animals and Indians . His best-known commissioned work was the design of the grizzly bear in the California state flag. Another famous work is his painting Nightwatch from 1870. It shows an Indian family around a campfire on the beach. It is on display in Knott's Berry Place , Buena Park , California . His depictions of the hard life of the first gold prospectors made him particularly well known in America.

Other paintings by Charles Christian Nahl are:

  • Fire in San Francisco Bay , 1856, Oakland Museum of California
  • The Love Chase , 1869, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento
  • The Abduction , 1870, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco
  • The Captivity , 1871, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento
  • The Rape of the Sabines: The Invasion , 1871, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco
  • Sunday Morning in the Mines , 1872, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento
  • The Fandango , 1873, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento

literature

  • Moreland L Stevens: Charles Christian Nahl: Artist of the Gold Rush, 1818-1878 exhibition catalog, 1976
  • Janice Tolhurst Driesbach u. a., Art of the Gold Rush , Oakland Museum, Crocker Art Museum, National Museum of American Art, University of California Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-520-21431-6 excerpt from Google Books
  • Peter E. Palmquist and Thomas R. Kailbourn: Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865 . Stanford University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8047-3883-1 . Excerpt from Google Books

Web links

Commons : Charles Christian Nahl  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ So Matthew Baigell by: Charles Christian Nahl. In: Ask Art. Accessed March 1, 2018 (English): "Charles Nahl is described as 'California's first significant artist'."
  2. ↑ Edan Milton Hughes: California Artist Charles C. Nahl. Author's website, archived from the original on January 22, 2013 ; accessed on March 1, 2018 (English).
  3. ↑ a b See short biography of Charles Christian Nahl on Karges Fine Art.
  4. ↑ The Panama Canal was built much later. Some of the prospectors also drove around Cape Horn on the southern tip of South America; both passages were considered dangerous
  5. ↑ Report of the Oakland Museum of California Exhibition "Art of the Gold Rush" January 24 to May 31, 1998 (English)
  6. ↑ Wenderoth was mainly responsible for the landscape background
  7. ^ Tracy Irwin Storer, Lloyd Pacheco Tevis: California Grizzly, University of California Press, 1996, ISBN 978-0-520-20520-8
  8. ↑ See article of the same name in the English language Wikipedia.
  9. ↑ Harvey L. Jones in: Janice Tolhurst Driesbach u. a., Art of the Gold Rush, Oakland Museum, Crocker Art Museum, National Museum of American Art, University of California Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-520-21431-6
personal data
SURNAME Nahl, Charles Christian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nahl, Carl Christian Heinrich; Nahl, Charles; Nahl, Karl; Nahl, Charles C.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1818
PLACE OF BIRTH Cassel
DATE OF DEATH March 1, 1878
Place of death San Francisco , California , United States