The painting captures the view of the right bank of the Volga, the Borisoglebsky side, and the Resurrection Cathedral, built in the 17th century. The landscape is a vertically elongated composition, in which the artist solves the difficult from the point of view of painting problems of depicting a white stone cathedral on white snow, a fine ratio of snow-covered birches, boats and a river with the white of sky. Sinking in a foggy haze through which the sun barely shines through, the sky occupies most of the landscape. The author seeks to convey the true and real state of nature; he brilliantly manages to express the mood of a frosty winter day, the silence and special charm of Russian winter. 

Alexey Petrovich Bogolyubov was born in the family of a colonel, a participant in the Patriotic War of 1812 and was the grandson of A. N. Radishchev. He studied in the Alexander Cadet Corps in Tsarskoye Selo, then in the Naval Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg, from which he graduated with the rank of midshipman. He then served in the Baltic Fleet. Alexey Bogolyubov received his art education at the Imperial Academy of Arts, where he was in the classes of landscape and battle painting. Since 1872, he lived mainly in Rome and Paris, annually coming to Russia. Bogolyubov’s Paris workshop was the center of the creative life of Russian retired artists. The painter became the founder of the Saratov Bogolyubovsky Drawing School and the Saratov Radishchev’s Museum, over which he took lifelong guardianship. The outstanding marine painter, creator of the picturesque history of the Russian fleet, public figure Alexey Petrovich Bogolyubov in his work has gone from academic romanticism to realism. From the first years of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions, he was his exhibitor, and since 1873 — one of the most active and influential members of the board. With the Wanderers of Bogolyubov, the spiritual heir to his famous grandfather, loyalty brought together the principles of realistic and democratic art.