Bernhard Plockhorst

In 1872, Plockhorst exhibited a painting which was soon regarded as his chief work, “The Battle of archangel Michael with Satan for the body of Moses” (today in the Städtisches Museum, Cologne). His next major work was the altar painting “The Resurrection of Christ” for the cathedral of Marienburg, painted by order of the Prussian ministry of education and cultural affairs.

Further paintings showed “Christ taking his leave of his Mother”, “Christ on his way to Emmaus”, “Christ appearing to Maria Magdalena”, “The exposure of Moses”, “The finding of Moses”, “Let the children come to me” (also called “Jesus blessing the children”), “Luther on Christmas Eve” (1887) and “The adulteress before Christ” (the latter formerly in Moscow, gallery Löwenstein).

Plockhorst's painting The Guardian Angel (1886), showing an angel and two little children close to an abyss, was reproduced as a color lithography in thousands of copies and greatly influenced the later pictures of guardian angels.

The glass windows of several U.S. American churches show motifs taken from Plockhorst, e. g. "The Good Shepherd" in the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Paul in Birmingham, Alabama,[1] “The Nativity” in the Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Shawnee, Oklahoma; "The Good Shepherd" in First Presbyterian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma; “Moses presents the Ten Commandments to Aaron on the mount Sinai” in the First Congregational Church UCC, Owosso, Michigan; “The Good Shepherd” in the Zion Lutheran Church, Baltimore, MD, and “The Flight into Egypt” in the Stanford Memorial Church.

Plockhorst's oil painting “Noli me tangere”, which is more than two square meters large, had a remarkable fate. Originally, Plockhorst painted it for the German Court. Later, it was to be exhibited in England, but on September 3, 1880 the ship Sorata, with the painting on board, was stranded on rocks between Adelaide and Melbourne, drawing water into its hold to a depth of 5.5 metres.[2] Much of the cargo was salvageable, but the artwork was completely encrusted by a white layer. It looked as if the sea water had decomposed the color particles. In this condition Prof. Francis Rouleaux, director of the Royal Technical College of Charlottenburg (Berlin) and Commissioner General for the German Empire,[3] took it to Melbourne, Australia. When the Melbourne International Exhibition was prepared in 1880, the art dealer Alexander Fletcher (1837–1914) bought the painting for a trifling sum and took it to the restorer George Peacock. Peacock discovered that the white layer was just plaster of Paris from the frame, which had been dissolved by the sea water. He could easily remove it, and Fletcher sold the restored painting to the National Gallery of Victoria for a considerable sum. At that time, the three largest daily newspapers of Melbourne reported extensively on that clever move.[4]

Plockhorst painted a portrait of the musician Franz Liszt (1857) and created portraits of other important people like the Leipzig publisher Tauchnitz, the Leipzig honorary citizen Carl Lampe, David Hansemann and the children of the family Platzmann. Besides, he portrayed members of the German nobility like Emperor Wilhelm I and his wife Augusta (1888; today in Berlin, National Gallery).

For the books of the Tauchnitz publishing house, Plockhorst drew different title-pages and frontispieces, e.g. for Three tales for Girls by the British author Dinah Maria Mulock Craik and for Charlotte M. Yonge's book The little Duke or Richard the Fearless. Ben Sylvester’s Word (1861). His illustrations for the following two books became very successful,

• From Bethlehem to Golgotha. The Life of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ according to the four gospels by Karl Gerok (1881);
• Psalter and harp. New jubilee edition by Philipp Spitta, including 24 full-page illustrations, the portrait of Spitta, further illustrations and 42 initials.

• 
  The Good Shepherd, 19th century by German Artist Bernhard Plockhorst
• 
  Christ Blessing the Children, 19th century by German Artist Bernhard Plockhorst
• 
  Victor over the Grave, 19th-century altarpiece by German Artist Bernhard Plockhorst
• 
  The Consoling Christ, 19th century by German Artist Bernhard Plockhorst