VERY FINE AND RARE CARVED AND POLYCHROME PAINT-DECORATED WOODEN PANEL OF TEMPTATION, HENRI (HENRY) BERNHARDT (B. 1870), SPARTANBURG, SOUTH CAROLINA, CIRCA 1935

Allan Katz, Woodbridge, Connecticut.

Henry (Henri) Bernhardt was an eccentric artist who gained national notoriety on August 7,1939, when Life magazine published photos of the life-sized statues of nude women he had placed on his front lawn, each enclosed in a glass box. In a letter to the magazine's editor, a Spartanburg resident reported that "there's been much discussion about them. Every time the neighbors complain about them, he adds another figure." In late October 1939, the Spartansburg Herald-Journal announced that Bernhardt planned to open a museum “that would house numbers of [his] wood carvings and paintings, recognized by authorities as some of the best throughout the South.” Among the sculptures described in the article are a head of Christ and figures of King Herod, Salome in a dancing pose, and a slave bearing the severed head of John the Baptist. This earlier relief carving of Eve seducing Adam may have been among the works intended for the museum and is a prime example of Bernhardt’s provocative style.