After a South Wind was lauded by contemporary critics, who considered it Austrian's most ambitious work to date. Austrian, born and raised in Reading, Pennsylvania, continued the Philadelphia school's tradition of illusionism begun by Charles Willson Peale. The motif of game birds also recalls works by William Michael Harnett, such as After the Hunt painted in 1883. After a South Wind is a large and elaborate composition, depicting a string of twenty-three ducks - mallards, pintails, widgeons and spoonbills - hanging from a nail driven into a rustic red barn door.

Responding to the perfection of the illusion in this painting, Miss Anne Fletcher, a contemporary of Austrian, wrote the following poem (quoted in Berks and Schuylkill Journal):
Poor little things! I sadly said,
There must be quite a score.
Who killed them all, and hung them up
Against that old barn door?

They are not dead - those pretty birds
That hang against that old barn door;
By magic touch of master hand
They'll live forevermore.