September 12 - Happy Birthday, Carl Eytel

nPosted on September 12, 2020

nIf you saw these paintings…

Desert Landscape, by Carl Eytel

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Desert Near Palm Springs, by Carl Eytel

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Oxashe, by Carl Eytel

n…you would think “desert” – but maybe you would even recognize these scenes as being in the American West?

Carl Eytel, born on this date in 1862, in the Kingdom of Württemberg – now Germany – grew up in a very green area.

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nBut as a youth he kind of fell for the American West. He discovered the West as he read about the explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. So it wasn’t that surprising that Eytel immigrated there as a young man. He worked in Kansas as a ranch hand and then in a slaughterhouse, but when he read about the Palm Springs, California, area, he decided to head there.

nEytel went back to Germany to attend art school for 18 months. Then he re-immigrated to the U.S. By 1903, Eytel had settled in Palm Springs.

When I think of Palm Springs, I think of old people who have a lot of money to splurge on posh condos. But Eytel moved there when he was just 41, and he was definitely not rich. As a matter of fact, he embraced the whole “starving artist” thing – putting painting and illustration ahead of working a regular job and earning a steady paycheck. Eytel lived in small cabins that he built himself, and he traveled all over the surrounding desert (which is confusingly called the Colorado Desert even though it is in California). When I say “traveled all over” – I mean mostly by foot! Like 400 miles of foot travel! Wow!

n(At times, of course, Eytel traveled by horse.)

nSome of Eytel’s art-based travels were in accompaniment of author J. Smeaton Chase and painter Jimmy Swinnerton. He guided George Wharton James all over the desert as the latter was writing a 2-volume book called The Wonders of the Colorado Desert, and Eytel illustrated the book.

nEytel showed his paintings in various California galleries and sold illustrations to various magazines and newspapers.

Many of Eytel’s works are careful illustrations of pinecones and pine needles, palm trees, and other botanical subjects. But others were impressionistic paintings of desertscapes, sketches of miners, and illustrations of the lives of indigenous people like Navajo and Cahuilla.