During the lifetime of the poet Nikolay Alexeyevich Nekrasov “Portrait of Empress Elizaveta Petrovna” was housed in the East Wing of the estate. The painting may be assumed to have been handed over to the Nekrasovs together with other things that were left at the Karabikha estate by Princes Golitsyns.

This exhibit is a copy of the work “Equestrian Portrait of Empress Elizaveta Petrovna with an Arab Boy” of 1743, which was executed by the German painter Georg Christoph Grooth. He painted in the Rococo style and was a court painter to Elizaveta Petrovna, daughter of Peter I and Catherine I.

The painting depicts the Empress in a uniform riding a white horse. The figure and head of the rider are slightly turned to the left. Elizaveta holds the reins with her left hand while her right hand with the baton is raised and moved to the left.

The horse’s neck is bent to the right, the head is slightly tilted and looking at the viewer with the right eye. The animal is leaning on the left front leg, with the right leg bent at the knee and raised.

A dark-skinned man can be seen running to the left of the rider. He is dressed in a green uniform with brown galloon, green short pants, red stockings and black shoes with white buckles. He is wearing a white turban with red feathers.

The art historian Yulia Chezhina writes, “As for the image of Elizaveta Petrovna on a riding trip accompanied by an Arab boy, Grooth, in fact, opened a new direction in the genre of equestrian portraiture in Russian art with this work: the image of a horsewoman appeared for the first time in Russian painting, as well as the genre of ‘portrait-ride’. The Royal figure is represented in the uniform of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, which she patronized in accordance with the tradition established by Peter the Great. In the Empress’s hand is a marshal’s staff.”

The original work is housed in the State Tretyakov Gallery.

Museum-Reserve of Nikolay Nekrasov “Karabikha” has a copy of the painting, which was created in 1765. It can be assumed that it was created by Vasily Klimov, a carver of the Saint Petersburg Mint. The inscription on the back of the canvas testified to this.

In 1919, after the nationalization of the Karabikha estate, the canvas was handed over to the Yaroslavl Museum of Local Lore. During the Soviet years, it was restored, and the inscriptions about the time of its creation and attribution were removed. The work was returned to Karabikha in 1948.