This was Watson’s first work on a large scale and he explained how the subject had ‘popped first’ into his head, ‘the sentiment of an old mill which had been a big factor in the lives of the pioneers’. The artist’s father had worked a pioneer mill, but it had failed in 1864. Lord Lorne, Governor General of Canada, was the husband of Princess Louise, the sixth of Queen Victoria’s nine children. He was described by a contemporary as ‘a right good fellow, and a good Canadian’ and was largely responsible for the creation in 1880 of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Signed and dated: Homer Watson 1880.

Provenance Acquired by Lord Lorne for Queen Victoria.