Landscape painting with views of cities is the first genre of landscape art in Russia. It appeared in the 17th century, primarily in the prints of foreign masters who visited Russia in passing. Interest in this type of depiction persisted until the 19th century. This is the genre to which the ‘View of Nizhny Novgorod’ by artist Nikanor Chernetsov belongs.

Chernetsov painted the landscape from an elevated point. Such angle allowed him to capture both the architecture of the Nizhny Novgorod kremlin and a broad panorama of the river with its shallows receding to the horizon line. The landscape is depicted with topographic accuracy but is not devoid of poetic flavour — the artist painted pale blue sky with darkening clouds, water expanse at the confluence of the Volga and Oka rivers, tender greenery in the foreground. He used the technique of scumbling — applied a broken glaze of oil on top of the main colour getting a complex colour and adding airiness.

Russian landscapist Nikanor Chernetsov, the third of four Chernetsov brothers – all of them painters - was born in the town of Lukh of the Kostroma guberniya. Today it belongs to the Ivanovo region, oblast.

When he was a child, his elder brother Yevgraf taught him to paint icons, at 19 he went to St. Petersburg, where under patronage of his brother Grigory and collector Pavel Svinyin he was able to enrol at the Imperial Academy of Arts. His teacher was landscapist Maxim Vorobyev. In 1831, he was nominated for academy membership and a year later was awarded the rank of academician for the ‘View of Tiflis’ painting.