Perham Wilhelm Nahl

Perham Wilhelm Nahl (January 11, 1869 – April 9, 1935) was an American printmaker, painter, illustrator and an arts educator active in Northern California.

Early life Perham Wilhelm Nahl was born to Annie (née Sweeny) and Hugo Wilhelm Arthur Nahl in San Francisco, California. 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 vivants 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 appeared in his defense, and subsequent scandals at home ended his theatre career.

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 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. 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. The image features a muscular male nude straddled between two bodies of land symbolizing the Culebra Cut in the Panama Canal. 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.