" Wounded Mamluk ", the episode of the battle of Pyramids / Napoleon invasion of Egypt in 1798

Nahl studied in Paris with Paul Delaroche and Horace Vernet (this is reason, why we attributed it at first to the hand of H.Vernet) and exhibited his works in the famous Salon de Paris. The political turmoil of the French February Revolution drove the trio again. They left France and took a ship to USA in 1848/1849. In New York they heard of the gold strike. Rahl arrived in Nevada City, California the next year, and then moved to Rough and Ready, California. Here, he purchased a "salted" mine. Having no luck along the Yuba River, Nahl and Hugo opened a studio with Wenderoth in Sacramento, moving to San Francisco after the 1852 Sacramento fire. (There is an illustration of the fire by Arthur) and made his living with 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 his 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. From 1853, many portrait paintings were made, sometimes in the style of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, also in collaboration with his brother Arthur, who acted as an assistant. We work like a workshop; Carl paints the heads, I paint the clothes ... Arthur wrote to Wilhelm Nahl in Kassel in 1853. However, this "mass production" was also responsible for the inconsistency and lack of vitality of many works. The dramatic painting Fire in San Francisco Bay from 1856 is also the result of a collaboration between the two brothers, who the Americans referred to briefly as "The Nahl Brothers". In addition, there were also prints, such as the woodcut "Grizzly", which was published in Hutching's Illustrated California Magazine (Vol 1, No. 3, p. 106).