The Sculpture "Coachman", 1850

This full-length plaster figure of a yamshchik, a post-coach driver, was cast in a mould in 1850; the sculptor's name is unknown. The coachman stands on a small pedestal, leaning on a horse's shaft-bow with a bell beneath its top, his left hand set on his hip.

He wears a summer kaftan belted with a sash, boots and a coachman's hat with a stylised wreath; on his left sleeve is a coachman's badge. He has a beard and moustache, hair escapes from under his hat, and the sash is tied in a knot with hanging ends.

Yamshchiks carried the post, officials and state cargo as part of the coaching duty, and until railways became widespread they were important to Russia's economy. The coachman appears in many works of literature and in folk songs, from Alexander Pushkin's "Winter Road" to the songs "Monotonously Rings the Little Bell" and "When I Served as a Post Coachman".