Charles Christian Nahl

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

Nahl, after immigrating to the United States for the first major Californian artists. He devoted himself to a variety of artistic genres.

Life

Nahl came from a family that since the 17th century always important artists in the fields had produced interior design, sculpture and pictorial representation of various kinds. His great-grandfather was the famous sculptor Johann August Nahl the Elder and his grandfather, the sculptor and painter Johann August Nahl the Younger. Several of his ancestors had a professor at the Art Academy in Kassel or even initiated this.

The apparently very talented Carl Christian Heinrich ( Christian name ) was 12 years old already a consummate watercolorist. He also studied at the Art Academy in Kassel. The economic situation and the political unrest caused him and his family and his friend, the artist Frederick August Wenderoth (* 1819 in Kassel, Germany, † 1884 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) in 1846 to leave his hometown Kassel and move to Paris. They were joined by his younger half- brother 15 years Hugo Wilhelm Arthur Nahl ( 1833-1889 ), later also known as a painter, illustrator and graphic designer and Carl Christian accompanied on all his other life stages. In Paris, Carl took the name Charles at, studied with Delaroche and Vernet and exhibited his works in the famous Salon de Paris. The political turmoil of the French Revolution of February sold the trio again. They left France took 1848/1849 a ship towards the USA.

In New York she reached the lure of the California Gold Rush. Like thousands of others, they booked a ship's passage that brought them through the Isthmus of Panama to the West Coast of the United States. In May, 1851, it 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 gold discoveries. Nahl began by sketching the miners who paid their portraits with gold dust. The dream of gold riches failed to materialize. Nahl opened with his brother Arthur and Wenderoth in Sacramento a painting studio and earned his livelihood with lithographs and illustrations for local newspapers and magazines. 1852 a fire destroyed most of Sacramento. Nahl moved on to San Francisco, opened a new studio and devoted himself with his brother Hugo and artist friend August Wenderoth his painting as well as commercial work. The artistic collaboration with Wenderoth is documented in the paintings Miner 's Cabin, Result of the Day and Miners in the Sierra.

From 1853 onwards created many, sometimes in the style of Jean -Auguste -Dominique Ingres crafted Portrait, also in collaboration with his brother Arthur, who served as an assistant. "We work as a workshop; Carl painted the heads, I paint the clothes ... " Arthur 1853 wrote to Wilhelm Nahl to Kassel. However, this " mass production " also responsible for the inconsistency and lack of vitality of many works. The dramatic painting Fire in San Francisco Bay from 1856 is also shown from the cooperation between the two brothers, who called the Americans just with "The Nahl Brothers". In addition, prints emerged as the woodcut " Grizzly ", which in Hutching 's Illustrated California Magazine ( Vol 1, No. 3, p 106) has been released.

Between the 1860s and 1870s, Charles Christian Nahl was one of the most successful painters in California. His academic, European style was appreciated and the paintings with motifs, which he referred in the literature, history, classical mythology, were part of the preferred equipment to attribute the villas of prominent families. One of his biggest supporters was the art collector Edwin Bryant Crocker of Sacramento, who was known as a lover of European painting. The works acquired by him are today in the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento.

1878 Nahl died of typhus in San Francisco.

Works

Charles Christian Nahl created numerous drawings and paintings of wild animals and Indians. His most famous commission was for the design of grizzly bears in the California Staastsflagge. Another famous work is his painting Night Watch from 1870. It shows an Indian family by the campfire on the beach. It's in the Knott 's Berry Place, Buena Park, California issued. His depictions of the hard life of the first prospectors made ​​him especially famous in America.

More 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