This painting was completed a year prior to the First Exhibition of Leningrad Artists, and was possibly painted specifically for it. The exhibition intended to demonstrate the successes of new Soviet art “on the road to mastering Soviet reality” (from the preface to the catalogue for the exhibition, which took place in the Russian Museum, Leningrad). The idea of sponsorship arose in Soviet ideology as one way of bringing “culture to the masses”, cultivating new individuals, and fostering healthy interaction between various societal groups. The romantic mood of this large canvas is reflected in the colour scheme: the shades of the red, blue, white, and ochre tones and that of the slightly agitated sea under the ship resonate with one another joyously, like the smiles on the faces of the people. The theme of the painting, necessitated by the demands of the historical era, is executed with the brush of a good painter, thus becoming a genre painting that reflects not only a real situation, but also the nature of Soviet art in the 1930s.