Artwork

Borchert Bernhard

Knights of the Livonian Order

Bernhard Karl Christian Borchert (1862, Riga – 1945, disappeared in Pomerania) studied art at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. He participated in exhibitions in Riga from 1894, was a well-known art teacher (at the Riga German Craftsmen's Association Crafts School, 1894 – 1909; at the Riga City Art School, 1909 – 1915). Many Latvian artists studied with him. Friendship with Borchert, a certain closeness of creative interests is a significant episode in the biography of Janis Rozentals, and the most significant proof of this is his painted portrait of Bernhard Borchert.

When the Riga Polytechnic was evacuated to Moscow during the First World War, Borchert continued his pedagogical activity there (professor, 1915 – 1917). The artist worked in oil, watercolor and pastel techniques. He is particularly known for his symbolic allegorical compositions on themes of mythology, fairy tales, and ancient history, but he also created portraits, landscapes, and was a well-known book and magazine illustrator. Contemporaries particularly admired his inexhaustible imagination and professional mastery, depicting Vikings, fauns, devils, witches, mermaids, and other characters from the world of fantasy.