With the support of Ekaterina Borodina, the album "Through the Halls of the Horse Breeding Museum" has been published.

April 15, 2025

562

With the support of Ekaterina Borodina, the album "Through the Halls of the Horse Breeding Museum" has been published.

The album "Through the Halls of the Horse Breeding Museum" has been released, published with the support of the charitable foundation "Otchiy Dom" and patron and collector Ekaterina Borodina. For the first time the album publishes a small part of the world’s largest collection of works of art in the equestrian genre from the holdings of the Scientific and Art Museum of Horse Breeding of RGAU-MSHA named after K.A. Timiryazev. This was an important event in the history of the Museum — a unique institution that unites scientific research into domestic horse breeding, its history and contemporary state, as well as a vast art collection comprising about 3,000 original paintings, graphic works and sculptures of horses by more than 200 authors. Among them are outstanding Russian painters and sculptors: M. Vrubel, M. Grekov, P. Klodt, A. Lansere, A. Orlovsky, A. Plastov, V. Polenov, F. Rubo, T. Salakhov, N. Sverchkov, V. Serov, V. Surikov, L. Turzhansky, R. Frentz, A. Shvabe, K. Yuon and others.

The publication of the album opened a new stage in the development of the Museum; with the support of patrons it is planned to continue the series of publications about unique items from the Museum’s own collection.

The album includes texts by horse-breeding specialist Yu.N. Kuznetsova. The introductory article was written by the Museum’s director O.V. Krupoderova. Museum specialists I.I. Bondarenko and Yu.B. Lopatina participated in editing the texts and compiling the bibliography. The reader is offered not only information about the artworks but also extensive research and even discoveries.

Racing, hunting, the fates of horses and riders, dramas, heirs, imperial horses, mystical secrets and stories… Readers will learn about the fate of the passionate horse lover Yakov Ivanovich Butovich — a major Russian horse-breeder, a refined connoisseur of art and a talented memoirist — and about which particular painting started the horse-breeding gallery and, in fact, the collection of the future museum.

Why were horses often given totally inappropriate names, sometimes referring to other animal species — whether Erminea, Bull (whose skeleton "marked" its 200th anniversary last year), Sable, Swan, Rooster, or Holstomer and Smetanka (for a bay mare)?

What is an "exterior" portrait of a horse — a notion that the artist Nikolai Sverchkov firmly established in painting, and later the term passed into photography. And how does the Orlov trotter — an inseparable part of national identity — affect the Russian person with its grandeur and indomitable strength?

It will be interesting to read about, and then see in the museum halls, the stallion "Letuchy" by Valentin Serov. This portrait may be called "psychological," because something makes us feel the horse’s inner state, its character, to see a rebellious, boiling nature. The most incredible thing, as the authors note, is that if you stare at one point without blinking and then defocus your eyes, you can see a fantastic shimmer of the horse, from dazzling silvery-white to velvety coal-black.

A chapter of the book tells about the considerable difference between two artistic schools in depicting horses — the "empty eye" in the portrait by an English artist and the "lively, almost human" eye in a Russian painter’s work — and about the hidden passion revealed by the author of one "Russian" portrait of an English stallion.

Finally, what story is hidden behind the elegant head of a gray Arabian horse, painted in oil on an oval porcelain plaque in 1913, and why did it become the "face" of the Horse Breeding Museum?

Undoubtedly, the album is of great importance for the preservation and popularization of Russian cultural heritage — the unique artistic collection in the ippological genre.

The Horse Breeding Museum also presents a new exhibition "Imperial Horses in the Paintings of A.P. Shvabe," dedicated to the work of the animal painter, academician and professor of the Imperial Academy of Arts Alexander Petrovich Shvabe (1824–1872). The Museum has reliably confirmed portraits of 13 horses from the imperial stables by Shvabe. The artist received official commissions to paint horse portraits from Nicholas I and his son Alexander II. The museum collection includes a portrait of Nicholas’s favorite horse, Lord, painted by the artist from the stuffed carcass of the gelding that fell in a military campaign. The exhibition will be open from April 19, 2025.

The album can be purchased at the Horse Breeding Museum. For individual visits the museum is open on weekdays from 10:00 to 17:00; guided tours are available by prior arrangement on any day of the week.