Homer Ransford Watson’s dedication to depicting the pastoral scenes of rural Ontario, the Hudson River and the Adirondacks areas in the United States, as well as England, would bring him international recognition as a landscape painter.

Born in 1855 in Doon, Ontario, Watson was primarily a self-taught artist. Watson was a member of the Ontario Society of Artists, a founding member and first president of the Canadian Arts Club, and later, from 1918 - 1921, the president of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Doon was an important painting place for Watson – he acquired a house there and depicted its surrounds throughout his life.
Watson’s work quickly gained prominence in Toronto through his exhibitions with the art societies, and in 1879, Watson’s submission won first place at the Toronto Industrial Exhibition. A year later, his work The Pioneer Mill was purchased for the Royal Collection of Queen Victoria at the opening exhibition of the RCA. He exhibited in the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London in 1886, and subsequently spent three years in England. Watson had international clients such as Oscar Wilde, who commissioned a painting and likened his work to that of the English painter John Constable.
Watson’s early paintings of rural subjects are characterized by a fine consideration for detail. Some of Watson’s early works were influenced by the American Hudson River School, and were compared to artworks in the Barbizon School. As Watson was exposed to works of the British and European Masters, he also simplified his forms and lengthened his brush-strokes, resulting in an atmospheric effect. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Watson was producing some of his best works; he produced his masterpiece, The Flood Gate, in 1900.
Watson gained a prominent international reputation - in 1899 he had a successful one-man show in London, followed by one in New York. In Canada, he became so well known that his works were acquired by prominent Montreal collectors, wealthy railroad contractor James Ross and Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie.