Julius Sergius von Klever was born in Dorpat (Tartu) in what is now Estonia. Konstantin von Kügelgen, whose father and uncle had been court painters to the tsars, gave him access to art and in particular to works by Caspar David Friedrich, as his uncle Gerhard von Kügelgen had been a friend of the German painter. Julius Sergius von Klever studied at the Academy in St Petersburg. The painting shows one of the artist's favourite subjects, with which he became famous at the time: a forest covered in deep snow, which gives him the opportunity to demonstrate his great painterly virtuosity. Trees with gnarled branches and slender birch trees frame a path that leads to a clearing where a lonely house crouches among the tall trees. Snow lies high on the branches, on the ground and on the roof of the house. In the centre of the picture, a person can be seen from behind, collecting firewood and trudging through the deep snow with a stick. The branches draw a calligraphic pattern against the sky, which is characterised by a light pink hue in contrast to the bluish shadow on the snow in the foreground. Oil on canvas , 53.5 × 80.5 cm . Signed and dated lower right in Cyrillic