In this picture, artist very unusually combines a household genre of painting with a symbolic image of mother, revealed through the theme of historical image of motherhood, resembling iconographic images of Virgin Mary and Madonna characteristic to many European painting. Background depicts the realities of St. Petersburg life of revolutionary era.

The picture was painted at the verge of the First World War and became a symbol of impending social changes for its contemporaries. It is virtual symbioses of traditional Russian Icons, early Italian frescoes and Neoclassical trends. Petrov-Vodkin personified the image of youth in the heroic image of the horse-rider, which he wrote based on the field impressions which he experience in his childhood spent on Volga river, in village Khvalynskoye.