The painting depicts a panoramic view of the Ai-Petri mountain range. In the center of the composition, on the right and left, are the low-rise houses of Crimean Tatars with flat roofs. There are two female figures on the roof of the building on the left. In front of the houses, in the foreground, there are boulders and a dried tree. Behind the houses, there are green tree crowns. The Ai-Petri range stands in the background, against the backdrop of the blue sky. For a long time, this landscape could not be attributed to anyone in particular, so it was known as the work by “an artist of the mid-19th century”. Currently, it is assigned to Sofya Sukhovo-Kobylina.

Sofya Vasilyevna Sukhovo-Kobylina was the sister of well-known writers Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin (the author of the three-act comedy “Krechinsky’s Wedding”) and Evgenia Tur. Sofya Sukhovo-Kobylina was born in 1815 into a wealthy and noble family. Her father was the leader of the Podolsky district nobility in the Moscow Governorate and a descendant of the boyar Andrey Kobyla (who descended from the Romanovs). Her mother came from the Shepelev family, one of the richest in Russia. Sofya received an excellent education at home, with the help of professors from Moscow University. However, she decided to dedicate her life to art.

She became a student of Yegor Meyer, a Russian landscape painter. Meyer quickly recognized her extraordinary artistic talent, accompanied by her determination and hard work, and so he started petitioning for her to be admitted to the Imperial Academy of Arts. He wrote,