Franz Roubaud painted The Battle at Kuruk-Dara in 1900. He reproduced it from his another painting of the same name done in 1888. The first piece was part of a series of works on Caucasian wars. The author created the cycle for the Temple of Glory museum in Tiflis.

This painting by Franz Roubaud shows two bodies of cavalry coming to quarters. On the left, we can see dragoons of the Novorossiysk Dragoon Regiment attacking, and on the right we can see Turkish horse cavalry. They move along the diagonal and seem to be about to gallop out of the canvas. The viewpoint was chosen so well that events in the forefront and in the background seem to intertwist. The main battle is far away, but the viewers see its turning point in the middle of the painting. The author arranged the composition so that, despite the tight space, we get the impression of large scale military action and dynamic events. The artist used various gestures and postures to communicate the emotional tension of the battle.

In this battle painting, Roubaud combined a battle scene with landscape painting. The dirty road eroded by rain, the deep rut just left by carriages, large boulders under the hooves of the horses, and the swarms of dust far away — all of that adds realism to the depicted events.

The first version of the painting on the same subject was different from that at the Yaroslavl Art Museum. In that version, the author put the terrible details in the forefront: killed people lying in the puddles, some facedown, some on their sides, in awkward poses. Those details added a humanistic message to the work. The painting showed war as a grave tragedy, not just an epic scene. In this respect, the artworks of Franz Roubaud were close to those of Vasily Vereshchagin.The first version of the painting on the same subject was different from that at the Yaroslavl Art Museum. In that version, the author put the terrible details in the forefront: killed people lying in the puddles, some facedown, some on their sides, in awkward poses. Those details added a humanistic message to the work. The painting showed war as a grave tragedy, not just an epic scene. In this respect, the artworks of Franz Roubaud were close to those of Vasily Vereshchagin.

However, the art expert Olga Fedorova also pointed out some differences in the methods of the two artists: ‘In the Caucasian cycle works, we can already see the main peculiarity of the gift of this battle painter, which makes his art different from Vereshchagin’s paintings. Roubaud depicted episodes of actual confrontation of the enemies, and Vereshchagin has relatively few of them.’ Mass battle scenes became a distinctive feature of Roubaud’s works. His exploration brought him to the creation of the monumental form: the artist became the founder of the Russian school of panoramic painting. His huge panoramas — The Battle of Borodino and The Siege of Sevastopol, — made him world renowned. Their length exceeded 110 meters and their height was over 10 meters.