Perham Wilhelm Nahl
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Perham Wilhelm Nahl (January 11, 1869 – April 9, 1935) was an American printmaker, painter, illustrator and an arts educator active in Northern California. An online facsimile of the entire text of Vol. 1 is posted on the Traditional Fine Arts Organization website ().


Early life

Perham Wilhelm Nahl was born to Annie (née Sweeny) and
Hugo Wilhelm Arthur Nahl Arthur Nahl (1 September 1833 – 1 April 1889) was a German-born artist, daguerreotyper, engraver, portraitist, and landscape painter. Nahl was a painter known for his American Old West paintings of California. He was considered one of Cali ...
in
San Francisco, California San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
. By the mid-1870s the extended Nahl family had moved to the nearby island town of
Alameda An alameda is a street or path lined with trees () and may refer to: Places Canada * Alameda, Saskatchewan, town in Saskatchewan ** Grant Devine Dam, formerly ''Alameda Dam'', a dam and reservoir in southern Saskatchewan Chile * Alameda (Santi ...
, where Perham first studied drawing and painting with both his father and his uncle, the fine art painter Charles Christian Nahl. The young Nahl became a director and president of the Alameda Olympic Club, was a competitive diver at the Pacific Swimming Club, and served on the board of the Gentlemen’s Exercise Club of Alameda.


Work

Perham Nahl was employed as a lithographer at H. S. Crocker & Co. when in 1894 he married Nanette (“Nan”) Woods in Berkeley; the couple continued to live in Alameda. In the mid-1890s he staged before large audiences several risqué
tableau vivant A (; often shortened to ; ; ) is a static scene containing one or more actors or models. They are stationary and silent, usually in costume, carefully posed, with props and/or scenery, and may be theatrically illuminated. It thus combines ...
s where naked models of both sexes were covered only with a thin layer of bronze pigment. His arrest and trial in New York City, where
William Merritt Chase William Merritt Chase (November 1, 1849October 25, 1916) was an American painter, known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later became the Parsons School of Design. ...
appeared in his defense, and subsequent scandals at home ended his theatre career. From 1899 to 1901 he was a staff illustrator at the ''
San Francisco Examiner The ''San Francisco Examiner'' is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and has been published since 1863. Once self-dubbed the "Monarch of the Dailies" by then-owner William Randolph Hearst and the flagship of the He ...
''. Nahl became a composer of popular music and served on the committee of the Alameda Coral Society. After divorcing his wife in 1902 he opened a studio in San Francisco and established his residence there, near the home of the Nahls’ family friend, Frederick Meyer. Perham attended the Mark Hopkins Institute from 1899 to 1905 and studied under Charles C. Judson, Arthur Frank Mathews, John Stanton, Alice Chittenden, and Frederick Meyer. He won school prizes in life class, portrait drawing, composition, design, poster art, and painting, as well as a scholarship and a teaching certificate at graduation. From February until May 1906 he taught at U.C. Berkeley as the Instructor of Pen and Ink Drawing in the architecture department but felt he needed to learn more, so he set off to Europe to study anatomy at the Akademie Heyman in Munich, Germany. On his return in 1907, Nahl became one of the founding members of the School of the California Guild of Arts and Crafts in Berkeley, which became today’s
California College of the Arts The California College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996, it opened a second campus in ...
Initially, Perham taught drawing, antique classes, and watercolor, and later added life classes for men and women, oil painting, and composition. He maintained an active teaching schedule until his death. In May 1908 Nahl married his second wife, Berkeley socialite and musician June Connor. He played a prominent role in the formation of the Berkeley Art Association in 1907 and the Berkeley League of Fine Arts in 1923. In 1912 Perham began a parallel career teaching in the art department of U.C. Berkeley, where he became a professor in 1929. He travelled frequently to Mexico, and his study of its modern muralists influenced his art. He was partly responsible for bringing an exhibition of drawings by
Diego Rivera Diego Rivera (; December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957) was a Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the Mexican muralism, mural movement in Mexican art, Mexican and international art. Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted mural ...
to U.C. Berkeley in 1926. Perham also became a leading authority on Japanese painting and was appointed curator of the massive Armes collection of oriental art at U.C. Berkeley. He died on April 9, 1935, in San Francisco, from injuries sustained when he was hit by a car.


Awards

Between 1880 and 1935 Nahl was a prolific exhibitor throughout California and his oil paintings, drawings, charcoals, prints (especially monotypes, etchings, and lithographs), sculptures, and watercolors were consistently well received. Among his many awards was the bronze medal at Seattle’s Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909 for his painting ''The Silence''. In 1915 at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE), Nahl’s ''13th Labor of Hercules''
lithographic Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German ...
poster was given a first prize and selected as the official image, which was featured on maps, book covers and catalogues of the Exposition, advertised worldwide. The image features a muscular male nude straddled between two bodies of land symbolizing the
Culebra Cut The Culebra Cut, formerly called Gaillard Cut, is an artificial valley that cuts through the Continental Divide in Panama. The cut forms part of the Panama Canal, linking Gatun Lake, and thereby the Atlantic Ocean, to the Gulf of Panama and he ...
in the
Panama Canal The Panama Canal () is an artificial waterway in Panama that connects the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. It cuts across the narrowest point of the Isthmus of Panama, and is a Channel (geography), conduit for maritime trade between th ...
. Also at the Exposition he received a bronze medal for his “psychological study” in oil titled ''Despair'' and a silver medal for his thirteen etchings. In 1926 he received a prize from the
California Society of Etchers The California Society of Printmakers (CSP) is the oldest continuously operating association of printmakers and friends of printmakers in the United States. CSP is a 501(c)(3) non-profit arts organization with an international membership of print ...
.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nahl, Perham Wilhelm 1869 births 1935 deaths People of the New Deal arts projects 20th-century American printmakers San Francisco Art Institute alumni University of California, Berkeley faculty People from San Francisco Artists from San Francisco California College of the Arts faculty