Sir Arnesby Brown was a Royal Academician who deliberately resisted Modernist influences, and a landscape painter known for his views of East Anglia.

This painting was exhibited in 1919, the year after the end of the First World War. Like other artists of this post-war moment (including Stanley Spencer), Brown enfolds the sweeping movement of the plough into the perspectives of the landscape. This suggests a harmonious integration that may have been particularly appreciated in contrast to the shattered landscapes of the war in France and Belgium.