Horse–Breeding Museum

A unique shrine of The Horse in Moscow

Timiryazev Moscow Agricultural Academy takes pride in its Horse–Breeding Museum, a unique collection of pieces of art and scientific artifacts concerned with The Horse. Students and horse lovers come to the Museum to admire paintings and sculpture, to glean information for their scientific work, and to meet other horse aficionados.

The core of the Museum dates back to the turn of the 20th century. Its was founded by a young Russian horse–breeder Yakov Butovich (1881–1938). He spent a fortune on pictures, drawings, pieces of sculpture related with his beloved creature, the horse. He also had the best trotters of his Prilepy stud painted by major Russian painters.

By 1917, the year of the Bolshevik revolution, he had amassed a large museum in his manor house at Prilepy (near Tver, Russia). He referred to it as the Stud Gallery. After the Revolution Butovich stayed on at Prilepy as director of his nationalized stud and the gallery. The gallery had received many valuable additions and by the time it was moved to Moscow in 1828 to become the core of the State Scientific & Artistic Museum of Horse Breeding to Moscow Racecourse (Hippodrome), it included about 1200 pieces.

As to Butovich himself, he became one of the millions of Russians purged by the Stalin regime. He was arrested and, when released years later, banned from Moscow and Russia's major cities. Butovich settled at Viazma near Moscow and continued to catalog and arrange his collection. His scripts survived and are treasured by the Museum experts. Later he was forced to move to Kursk province, where he died in poverty in 1938. In 1940 the Museum was given over to Timiryazev Agricultural Academy as an educational museum for students of Horse–Breeding Department. Later decades have seen extensive growth of the Museum's collections.

Museum's collections

At the moment the Museum has around 3,000 pieces of painting and sculpture and other artifacts. It also has an impressive collection of 50,000 photographic negatives, rich collections of stamps, cards, envelopes, badges and other pieces that document the rich history of Russian horse–breeding, racing, and equitation.

Most of the Museum pieces are originals by prominent painters, engravers, and sculptors, mostly Russian. Some canvases are brushwork of world–renowned Russian painters, such as Serov, Vrubel, Polenov, Plastov, Surikov, Vereshchaghin. The bulk of the collection, however, are works by animalist and battle painters: B.P. and A.B. Villevalde, P.N. Gruzinsky, P.O. Kovalevsky, A.P. Orlovsky, P.P. Sokolov, P.F. Frents, P.K. Klodt, E.A. Lansere, N.I. Liberikh, to name but a few.

The Museum is especially rich in pieces by N.E. Sverchkov (1817–98), a devoted painter of horses. More than 210 oils and sketches, 150 water–colors and drawings, 10 albums by Sverchkov were collected by the founder of the Museum and his followers. A whole "gallery of pedigree steeds," especially of Orlovs, is an invaluable contribution to the equine and equestrian history of Russia. Among Sverchkov's works one finds numerous genre scenes from all works of Russian life, from peasantry to the Royalty, the horse being the main hero. Dashing troikas, thoroughbreds, toiling nags, and peasant horses are all subjects for the painter's loving brush.

As a matter of interest, when troika driving contests were being revived in Russia several decades ago it appeared that no single set of trappings had survived. And it was Sverchkov's pictures showing splendid troika turnouts that were consulted for hints.

Sculptures

The Museum takes pride in having a set of 30 sculptures by E.A. Lansere (1848–86), a major Russian sculptor. His true–to–life groups of Don and Zaporozhie Cossacks, Kirghiz and Kasakh nomads, Caucasian mountaineers, hunters with falcons and hounds — all adorn the Museum's halls. His equestrian statuettes show a wide variety of Russian breeds, some of them extinct.

Exbititions in the West

The Museum is active holding exhibitions of paintings, water colors, engravings, etc., in Russia and abroad and is open for proposals. Among the latest successful exhibitions have been those in Dresden, Helsinki, and Paris.

The Museum will consider proposals to hold guest exhibitions abroad.