This work belongs to the same interior space as the later "Cossack in Thought" - an image rooted in family memory and a sense of inherited identity. The figure and the horse are painted in close proximity, their forms merging in the dark background. There is no landscape, no action, no narrative moment. Only presence.
The horse is white, its head lowered toward the man. The man holds the bridle with a weathered hand. Neither looks outward. The connection between them is quiet and complete - two figures that belong to the same world, the same lineage, the same unspoken understanding.
For Maltsev, the Cossack was not a historical subject but a personal one - a thread running back through generations, through his grandfather's stories, through a sense of who his people were. This painting does not explain that thread. It simply holds it.
