A driver seated atop an open wagon commands a three-abreast hitch of dark horses in full decorative harness, captured outdoors in what a period inscription identifies as Moscow. The CDV format and albumen print point to production in the 1860s to 1870s, with the Saint Petersburg studio of I. Monstein supplying the mount. The three horses are fitted with elaborately studded leather collars and matching traces, and a distinctive tall hame arch rises above the center horse in the traditional Russian troika arrangement. The driver, positioned on the left side of the box, wears a dark coat and a visored cap, and a stand of tall conifers fills the background behind the rig.

The Monstein studio operated at the corner of Bolshaya Morskaya and Nevsky Prospekt in Saint Petersburg, one of the city's premier commercial addresses for photography. The Monstein name is associated with Russian ethnographic and genre photography of the 1860s, and the surname suggests a German origin. The outdoor setting and subject matter, depicting a working Moscow carriage team rather than a studio portrait, reflect the documentary impulse common among Russian photographers of that era who recorded street life and working trades.

Stamped in blue ink on the reverse: "На углу Большой Морской и Невского, И. Монштейнъ, и Невскаго 11–39" (At the corner of Bolshaya Morskaya and Nevsky, I. Monstein, Nevsky 11–39). Inscribed in pencil above the stamp: "carriage with 3 horses about in Moscow."