The 1920s were the most prolific years in the career of Yakov Weber. At that time the artist lived in the village of Mühlberg and worked a lot outdoors, painting large pieces based on his studies. Among them is a painting from the collection of the Engels Museum of Local Lore “A Tugboat with Barges”.

It is a motif often used by the painter. Later, Yakov Weber recalled that he worked with great passion on the boat, then on land, trying to capture the lighting, color, the spirit and mood as accurately as possible, not copying exactly what he saw, but discarding what was in the way and emphasizing the important things so that the view turned out to be, albeit imbued with the artist’s feeling, still true and realistic. Sometimes Weber arrests the viewer’s gaze by placing an object or a part of land in the foreground, which increases the sense of illusion of space and creates a rapid movement of the gaze into the depths. The object in Weber’s works is often captured in fragments. This technique awakens the viewer’s imagination, creates the impression of a randomly chosen motif, a naturally depicted subject, a movement, and a breath of life.

Two large wooden painted barges of a typical structure with a wooden rudder and a high mast are brightly illuminated by the evening sun, receding beyond the edge of the painting. Weber depicts working people as small staffage figures, marked by the artist’s bold brushstrokes. Thus, the landscape is enlivened by a genre scene. The work is in full swing. The sky with clouds illuminated by the last rays of sunlight is highly expressive. It is getting dark. Next to the barge, a barely noticeable small boat is waiting for passengers. The calm Volga water caresses the gentle sandy shore.

Besides his creative work, Yakov Weber had to work on private commissions: banners, copies of posters and photographic portraits. Nevertheless, public and political events could not force Weber to give up glorifying the beauty of his native Volga.

In 1927, the year when the painting “A Tugboat with Barges” was created, an exhibition of works by artists of the German Republic opened for the first time in Pokrovsk (Engels). Out of 100 works presented at the exhibition, about 30 works were created by Weber and were a huge success.