Mare With Foal, After Peter Clodt Von Jurgensburg, 1962 Kasli Iron Figure

This outstandingly detailed cast iron figure shows a rare perspective on equine art, showcasing the horses’ tranquillity and love more than their speed and strength. An ideal artwork for a rider or anyone involved in breeding horses, the piece’s origins come from thoroughbred bloodlines. Peter Jakob Clodt von Jurgensburg (1805–1867) was a German nobleman whose career as an artist took place mainly in Russia, where he was known as Pyotr Karlovich Klodt. He excelled as a sculptor of horses, drawing on great technical prowess and outstanding observation, attracting the attention and patronage of Tsar Nicholas I. His famous monument to Nicholas in St Petersburg was the first bronze statue to show a horse rearing, supported only on the rear legs. Following the revolution, the Bolshevik regime destroyed most monuments to the Tsars, but preserved and even adopted Clodt’s work. This heavy and impressive figure of a mare and her foal is a Soviet replica of a bronze by Clodt that is now housed in the Belorussian State Museum. It was cast in 1962 at the Kasli Iron Foundry, which was a flagship venture of the USSR - a showcase of the quality and craftmanship that the Soviet Man could achieve, working in proletarian iron rather than bourgeois bronze. The foundry is operating to this day, and uses a unique method to create a lustrous black patina on its works. Here, the artist and foundry have captured a calm and tender moment between mother and foal. The mare gazes peacefully and the foal’s front legs are splayed out as its neck curves around to feed, in a perfect observation of life. The piece is dated 1962 - a time of intense Cold War tensions, amidst the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Penkovsky espionage scandal. This statue is likely to have come to the UK as a diplomatic gift, an outreach of soft power in days of severe conflict. Indistinctly signed Pyotr Klodt, base marked KASLI 1962 MADE IN THE USSR (КАСЛИ́ 1962 СДЕЛАНО В СССР). Height: 30cm; width: 33cm; depth: 27cm.