Maria White Keogh is a 1979 Staples High School graduate.
She read the recent “06880” story on “Man Rising” — a mammoth sculpture by Westport artist Matthias Alfen — and the reference to noted Westport sculptor James Earle Fraser, who among other works designed the buffalo nickel, the “End of the Trail” sculpture of a Native American slumped over a tired horse, and the Theodore Roosevelt statue at the Museum of Natural History.
She checked in, to make sure her grandfather, Berthold Nebel, is not forgotten.
Born in Switzerland in 1889, he came to the US with his parents when he was 1.
He was hired as Fraser’s studio assistant in Gramercy Park, New York City. Nebel moved to Westport in 1930, on the advice of Fraser, and bought a 9-acre piece of land with a farmhouse on it.
Nebel soon built an artist studio much like Fraser’s. Nebel lived and worked there with his family, until his death in 1964.
Berthold Nebel’s Westport studio.
Here, he worked on commissions that included 2 sets of bronze doors for the Museum of the Americna Indian, and the Museum of the National Geographic Society.
Among Nebel’s other works: a statue of Confederate General Joseph Wheeler for the rotunda of the US Captiol, and another of General John Sedgwick for the front of the Connecticut Capitol in Hartford.
Berthold Nebel, with his sculptures in his studio.
Six months before atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, Nebel designed a metal called “World Unity or Oblivion.”
It shows a US soldier aiding a wounded companion. The reverse side says:
An explosion intended to destroy enemy forces … also obliterates whole communities.
Modern warfare has developed to such a degree that civilization may vanished from the earth unless there is to be better understanding among nations. This metal was designed to help impressed that thought, which I believe is uppermost in our minds.
One of Nebel’s last works was called “Adventure.” It showed a man and woman on a farm horse, riding toward a new life. The renewal of the human spirit was one of his favorite themes.
“The Adventure” (Berthold Nebel)
His studio is still in the family, and much of his artwork remains. Maria’s mother Lucia — a noted artist herself — lived there until she died in 2017.
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