Carl Nebel
19th century Printmaker
German, (March 18, 1805–Jue 4, 1855)
Carl Nebel was born in Altona, a town west of Hamburg, Germany in 1805. Although he was trained in the Neoclassical style of art, his work came to embrace the emphasis on a nostalgic past and the importance of an imaginative mind typical of Romanticism. Nebel arrived in Mexico in 1829, shortly after the end of the colonial period and at a pivotal moment during the country’s political and social re-creation as a Republic. Strongly influenced by the writings of the Prussian naturalist von Humboldt, Nebel came to Mexico with a naturalist’s thirst for discovery and an idealist’s curiosity for the unknown. In 1836, the artist published Voyage in French; four years later, due to its popularity, he re-printed a second edition in Spanish. Working closely with the American author George Wilkins Kendall, the artist later illustrated and published in 1851 a highly-regarded album on the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. Nebel died in Paris in June 1855.