An overshot mill in a wooded landscape with a figure in the foreground

The advent of the steam engine in Britain in the early nineteenth century greatly reduced the need for water wheels in the driving of machinery in flour mills and factories. As a result overshot mills, such as the one in the present work, increasingly became subjects of rural nostalgia in art. They were a favourite subject for Frederick Richard Lee, and also his contemporary Frederick Waters Watts (1800-1862).
It is possible that the present work was exhibited by the artist at the Royal Academy in 1855, no.154, as A Devonshire Mill.