A native of Lithuania, Bernstein arrived penniless in the United States at the age of sixteen. He began to paint while employed as a clerk in a general store in West Virginia and later studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art and at the Art Students’ League in New York, While in Paris to complete his training at the Académie Julian, two of his paintings were accepted for exhibition at the annual Salon. Bernstein worked in the Netherlands before returning to Baltimore in 1903 where he opened a studio. Depressed by poor health, however, he took his own life while still in his early thirties. Bernstein specialized in interior scenes and in figure studies, his work often marked by a certain poignancy.