PHOTO: Biscuit Porcelain Busts of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. by the famous Russian sculptor Leopold Adolfovich Bernstam (1859-1939). From the Collection of the State Russian Museum in St. Petesburg.

Leopold Adolfovich Bernstam was born to a Jewish family in Riga, on 20th April 1859. At the age of 13, he studied under the famous Danish-Russian sculptor David Ivanovich Jensen (1816-1902). The following year, at the age of 14, Bernstam entered the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, where he earned several awards.

From 1885 he lived in Paris where he worked as a sculptor at the Grévin Museum. He is credited with being the author of some 300 sculptures in his lifetime, including at least 5 monuments to Emperor Peter I of Russia.

In the early 1880s he temporarily moved to Russia, where he made about 30 busts of celebrated Russians, including authors, playwright and composers. In 1885 he settled in Paris, often returning to St. Petersburg. 

PHOTO: Leopold Adolfovich Bernstam (1859-1939)

In 1895 Léopold Bernstam received a commission to create portrait busts of members of the Imperial Family. Among them was the new Tsar and Tsarina, who were crowned in Moscow in May 1896.

In his diary, dated 20th September and 21st, 1895, Nicholas II wrote: “… after breakfast spent more than an hour sitting for Bernstam…” and on 21st September: “sat for the sculptor again”.

At the beginning of 1896, Bernstrom was invited to Tsarskoye Selo, where he completed busts of several members of the Tsar’s family in less than three weeks. Among them were a pair of marble busts depicting the August Couple, which served as excellent models for mass-produced copies, which were installed in the lobbies or foyers of all government buildings, as well as educational charitable institutes, hospitals, etc.

Bernstam’s last work in St Petersburg was a bust of Emperor Alexander III, which was installed in 1914, in the garden of the Russian Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III [renamed State Russian Museum]. It was removed in 1918. 

Leopold Adolfovich Bernstam died at the age of 79, on 22nd January 1939, in Menton (France), a town located on the Mediterranean Sea at the Franco-Italian border.

© Paul Gilbert. 5 June 2024