BERNSTAM Leopold-Bernhard (Leopold Adolfovich) (1859-1939), sculptor. He lived in St. Petersburg in 1872-85. He studied under David Jensen at the Drawing School of Artists Encouragement Fund and in the Academy of Arts (an external student in 1877-83). From 1885 he worked in Paris, often returning to St. Petersburg for commission work. He painted approximately 300 portraits of Russian and European representatives of culture, science and politics, and sculpted many busts and monuments, including sculptures on the ancient and biblical subjects. He created busts of Fedor Dostoevsky (from Dostoevsky’s death mask, 1881), Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (the early 1880s; erected at the writer's grave in 1900), Denis Fonvizin, Alexander Pushkin, and Alexander Ostrovsky for the foyer of the Alexandrinsky theatre (the early 1880s); monuments to Anton Rubinstein (put up in the Conservatory foyer in 1902), Alexander Pushkin (1911, today at the Egyptian Gates to Pushkin) and Peter the Great: Peter the Great kisses the Infant Lois XV (put up in a Peterhof park, not preserved), Peter the Great Saving the Drowning in Lakhta in 1724; Peter the Great Learning Shipping Trade in Saardam, Holland in 1697 (The Tsar-Carpenter, put up in the Admiralty Embankment in 1909 and 1910; removed in 1918; a copy of the latter was erected in the same place in 1996). He made portraits of Nicholas II and members of the Imperial family (1896). His last work for St. Petersburg was the bust of Emperor Alexander III (erected in the garden of the Russian Museum, removed in 1918).
Reference: Северюхин Д. Я. Любимый скульптор Государя // Невский архив: Ист.-краевед. сб. М.; СПб., 1993. [Вып. 1]. С. 246-259.
O. L. Leikind, D.Y. Severyukhin.
