Baron Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, known in Russian as Pyotr Karlovich Klodt, was a favourite sculptor of Nicholas I of Russia. He was an Academician and Professor Emeritus of the Imperial Academy of Arts. Petersburg, its surroundings and many estates were decorated with animalistic works of Klodt.
Background
Peter Clodt was born on June 5, 1805 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The sculptor's family came from Baltic German aristocrats, consisted of hereditary military men. Father Karl Fedorovich Clodt von Jurgensburg was a military general, fought in the Patriotic War of 1812. The portrait of the illustrious general occupies a worthy place in the gallery of the Winter Palace. Peter's his childhood and youth were spent in Omsk.
Far from European culture, the baron's penchant for carving, modeling and drawing was manifested. Most of all, the future artist liked to portray horses, he saw a special charm in them.
Education
Clodt graduated from the St. Petersburg Artillery School. From 1822 to 1828 he was in the military service. Studied at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg under the guidance of V. P. Ekimov in 1829-1836.
Stemming from a distinguished family of Baltic Germans, Clodt von Jürgensburg, Clodt started his career as a professional artillery officer and amateur sculptor. As a legend has it, Nicholas I remarked to Klodt that he "creates horses finer than any prize stallion does". Clodt"s most famous group of horse sculptures, the Horse Tamers, was installed at the Anichkov Bridge in 1851.
He was also responsible for the bronze statue of Ivan Krylov in the Summer Garden (1848-1855).
lieutenant was the first monument to a poet erected in the Russian Empire. Clodt collaborated with Vasily Demut-Malinovsky on the statue of Saint Vladimir in Kiev and the statuary for the Narva Triumphal Gate.
He also sculpted a quadriga above the portico of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Clodt"s last significant work was a posthumous tribute to his patron, a horse statue for the equestrian Monument to Nicholas I on Saint Isaac"s Square, which has the distinction of being the first equestrian statue in the world with merely two support points (the rear feet of the horse).
Even the Bolsheviks, who destroyed all the memorials to Nicholas I across Russia, did not dare to demolish this unique statue.
Klodt died in his estate in Finland on 20 November 1867.
Achievements
He attended the classes at the Imperial Academy of Arts, where his mastery in depicting horses eventually won him the rank of Academician and a praise of the Tsar.
