Join Gabrielle Gopinath for “Murals by Franz Bernau at Ferndale’s Church of the Assumption: “Fancy Painting” in Humboldt County’s Timber Rush” on Saturday, January 4 at 1:00 p.m., in the first-floor conference room of the Humboldt County Library, 1313 Third Street, Eureka. The lecture is part of the ongoing lecture series sponsored by Humboldt County Historical Society. Admission is free, and everyone is invited. 

Repairs underway on Ferndale's Church of the Assumption revealed mural paintings extant beneath the layers of paint and acoustic tile covering the interior of the Gothic Revival church. In 2018, after a nine-month restoration, an extraordinary suite of murals around the church altar was uncovered. A photograph of the church interior published in 1896 confirmed that these were elements of the church’s original decoration. They had been completed by a German-born immigrant and decorative painter named Franz, or Francis, Bernau. In this way a major work of decorative painting by a previously unheralded artist came back into view — 123 years after the work was first completed, and nearly a century after it had been effaced. This talk outlines what is known of Franz Bernau’s life and work and describes the murals he completed for the Ferndale church. It traces influences that shaped these paintings’ iconography and explores ways in which a visual culture unique to California’s frontier North Coast may have influenced the artist’s approach.

Gabrielle Gopinath is a writer, critic and art historian who lives in Arcata. She received her Ph.D. in art history from Yale University and currently teaches art history and film history at College of the Redwoods. She is the art critic for the North Coast Journal and has recently written about art for publications including Art Practical, San Francisco Art Quarterly, and Sculpture magazine.

To learn about the “fancy paintings” of Ferndale’s Church of the Assumption and the artist who painted them, join Dr. Gopinath on Saturday, December 7 at the Humboldt County Library.