Jacob Maentel

Jacob Maentel or Mental (1763–1863) was a German-American folk artist known for his portrayal of 19th-Century America. Maentel is most notable for his watercolor portrait art that minutely portrayed the décor and dress of early American immigrant communities.

Little was known of Maentel's life until American art historian Mary Black reconstructed his life through her scholarship beginning in the 1960s.

Early life Maentel was born Johann Adam Bernhard Jacob Maentel in Kassel, Holy Roman Empire in 1763. After training as a physician, Maentel worked as a mercenary and entered Napoleon Bonaparte's Army during the War of the Third Coalition where, according to tradition, he served as Napoleon's secretary in Westphalia. In 1806 Maentel was discharged from the French Army around the time of his father's death.

Maentel married Catherine Weaver of Baltimore in 1821. They had four children: William, Louisa (later married to Owenite educator-turned-capitalist Thomas Mumford Sr.), Wilhemina, and Frederick. Following his marriage, Maentel lived in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania and produced numerous portraits of local residents, many of them German-Americans over the next 20 years.

Later life and death Maentel lived and painted in New Harmony until his death in 1863. Much of his work was lost in an 1858 fire including miniature portraits of his sisters, his Army discharge papers, and other portraiture. Salvaged from the fire was book of "Materia Medica" handwritten to include a recipe for "Mental Salve," still singed and in a family collection.

Selected works