BERTHOLD NEBEL WESTPORT STUDIO & WRESTLERS SCULPTURE
  by Sara Drought Nebel

   I remember when I first saw the studio. I was awestruck then and ever since, by these masterful works and inspired by the artistry of the building itself. The history of it, the stories still alive here whispering under the skylights illuminated by eternal northern light. Within the quiet and celebratory bustling of a big active family, the sculptor and his model (wife, mother and matron) Marietta, are here in the sculptures in the room. Still bearing witness to generations of beings. Timeless in their symbolism of struggle, hope, romance and rebirth.

Struggle. The human condition.

   I think about all of this as I drive up this common suburban road with its handsome houses, built by the sculptor's son in law George White, who married his daughter Lucia. Their son Emil Corrado (my late husband Dino’s father) was born in Rome and 4 years old when daughter Lucia was born, on Berthold’s birthday, April 19,1923 in Pittsburgh. The family moved to Westport from New York just before the collapse of the stock market. Maria had encouraged Berthold to invest in land. They bought the farmhouse and built his stone studio next to it.    
   It is today as I always knew it. I feel like a time traveler driving up to a stone manor in the Italian countryside. Anticoli Corrado, the little village outside of Rome where Maria was from. The land of Madonnas. A place where painters and sculptors working at the Academy often found models.

This is how Berthold met Maria.

   I drive up, park in the back and walk past one of two arching doors that the sculptures would move in and out with pulleys. From the cement terrace, I can imagine when there were just vast open fields cascading down the hill dotted with apple trees and stones. Maria’s garden in the center. The wide busy paved roads of today were dirt roads with farms, houses separated by a lot of open land.
    Through a big wooden door to the studio's tall open room. Massive skylight above, figurative sculptures around the room, a cast of the artist’s hands. On the wall, a portrait of Maria - painted by a rival of Berthold’s for her affection, a student from the Academy, Lucia told me.The portrait has been there since I can remember, her youthful, innocent face in profile looking toward the bedroom door.
Natural blue light shines down on the Wrestlers big bronze sculpture, situated right near the arching door, where it came in long ago. The only other bronze is at a private home in Long Island.
   Nearby is a smooth white plaster cast of the classic Nereid, a reclining madonna on a
muscular lion. Its marble twin, commissioned by Archer Huntington, is displayed in the middle of a pond at Brookgreen Gardens, in South Carolina.
Leaning up against the fireplace are the plaster casts of the Museum of the American Indian doors, depicting the daily life of Native Americans. In bronze adorning the Hispanic Society of America in New York City.

   On the mantle showcase over a large stone fireplace, in the center is Marietta, a torso of Maria. Adventure sits on a marble coffee table in the center of the room - a romantic sculpture, possibly Berthold’s last, portraying a young couple on a strong horse, riding into the future. It was inspired by young people putting their lives back together after WWII, and was perhaps a reminiscence of his bride and himself after the first World War.    The grandchildren of Berthold and Maria now own the historic studio in Westport, CT. It is destined to be sold in the near future. Wrestlers, the Rodin inspired sculpture Nebel created during WWI, as his thesis at the Academy in Rome, must be moved to a new forever home.
   Stony Creek Quarry, in Branford, CT, home of unique pink granite (also the base of the Statue of Liberty), has graciously offered to provide a base for this majestic piece. A rough-hune pedestal perfectly fitting for the struggle of man - the iconic symbolism this sculpture captures in its dramatic pose.

As I write this, it is Berthold’s (and his daughter, Lucia’s) birthday today, April 19th.

   Our family goal, in addition to finding a public home for the Wrestlers sculpture (and the Museum of the American Indian plaster doors), is to place a plaque on the Studio property with a short biography about the sculptor who lived and worked there, and to rename the road “Nebel Lane” in his honor. And we hope that the buyer of this historic studio/property, restores it with its artistic history in mind, as the owners of Berthold’s friend and mentor, James Earle Fraser did many years ago, when they purchased his studio, on Fraser Lane.

PLease contact Sara Drought Nebel at - saradnebel@gmail.com or Maria White Keogh (Berthold’s granddaughter) at mwkeogh56@gmail.com with questions about the Nebel Studio and/or purchase interest. Read the article written by Max H. Peters, in the previous issue of CTOldHouse.