Georgs Francs Bernharts un 19. gs. otras puses neogotiskie altaru retabli Latvija

The article deals with Georg Franz Bernhardt (1831-not before 1908), a relatively unknown master carpenter of Riga. Over thirty years he had created anew and reconstructed thirty six church furnishings in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The latest researches allow us to connect Bernhardt’s name with the altars of ten churches in Latvia. The figures of apostles in the altars made by Bernhardt are examined with particular regard to their historical prototypes. With a recommendation from the Berlin Academy of Art, Bernhardt came to Riga in July 1860 to teach drawing at a private boys’ school. In 1862 he gave up teaching and set up a carpenter’s workshop to make furniture. In 1881, aged fifty one, Bernhardt was admitted to the carpenters’ corporation of Riga Small Guild, and he started active public work. In 1890 he left his enterprise in Riga. In 1905 the above-mentioned memoirs were published in Germany. In 1909 Bernhardt’s name disappears from the Riga address book and the directories do not mention his widow Wilhelmine Bernhardt either. Therefore he might have returned to Germany in 1908, not in 1905 as Campe’s lexicon states. The place and time of the master’s death remain unknown. Neo-Gothic altar retables created by Bernhardt for churches in Latvia are items complying with the current artistic trends of the time. The frame construction of the altars was appropriated from the Neo-Gothic solutions found in the Berlin edition of Architektonisches Skizzenbuch. But he himself selected figural images for altar compositions, examining the most prominent medieval artistic monuments. Further research could clarify some remaining obscure details, as there is no doubt that Bernhardt’s contribution to the 19th century local arts and crafts is significant enough to be included in the history of art of Latvia.