Vereshchagin painted a real-life view of the city using academic art techniques. He painstakingly reproduced architectural proportions and applied the law of perspective: the farther the object from the viewer, the smaller it appears. For distant objects, the dimensions had to be calculated with high precision.

Moreover, Vereshchagin moved the scene to Russia. Academy artists of the time used to paint ‘idealistic’ Italian views, but he found his native country’s landscapes just as beautiful. He preferred to depict the reality as he saw it: playing children, boatmen and fishermen, the hustle and bustle of crowded markets. It was those depictions of busy urban life against the background of stately architecture that made Pyotr Vereshchagin famous.

Chusovaya has been known for its towering banks with large rocks, or ‘stones’ as the locals called them. In her book about Vereshchagin’s artwork, Irina Golitsyna specifically mentions his studies Stone Ostryak, Stone Yermak, and Stone Vysoky pointing out that those works “evidence the artist”s aspiration to paint true to life, represent reality with rigor and precision”, and not just to produce eye-catching compositions in the Academy style.