Coutts, who changed his name in 1893 from Hubert Coutts Tucker, was one of five artist sons of Edward Tucker, who settled at Ambleside in 1868. Coutts was a regular exhibitor at the Dudley Gallery from 1874 and at the Royal Academy, where this watercolour was exhibited in 1891, although like Henry Clarence Whaite he was probably better know to northern collectors than in London. He became a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours in 1912.

In common with John William North, Coutts wanted to evoke specific times of the year and treated rustic life with accuracy. In the present watercolour the farmer on the left digs up a root vegetable as a supplementary foodstuff for his flock, and the golden browns of dead bracken only recently crushed by the weight of snow announce the onset of Spring.

The river Duddon flows from the central mass of the Furness Fells in a southerly direction