[2] In the finished canvas Thomson moved the pine further to the right, replaced a less defined foreground plane with strongly patterned rock shapes, and removed a dead tree limb from the ground.

[3] As in his iconic The Jack Pine, Thomson began the painting with an undercoat of vermilion that he allowed to show through in various places to contrast with the greens, to lend the work a feeling of "vibration" and movement.

[1] Thomson's background in design lent his composition an Art Nouveau sensibility, for example, "in the way a single tree stands silhouetted against water or the sky like a symbol of romantic solitude".

[5] An earlier reviewer noticed the same effect in it and The Jack Pine: "[these] two best-known canvases... are essentially Art Nouveau designs in the flat, the principal motif in each case being a tree drawn in great sinuous curves...

"[11][12] Curator Charles Hill has noted that the tension arises due to the trunk of the tree being "unmodulated and outlined in a darker colour" and the foreground rocks being blocked schematically, all while the sky and water "are treated with a feathery touch.

"[15] Thomson biographer and curator Joan Murray, while initially disliking the painting, wrote that it "is a powerful canvas; resonating with its message of weather and wind, it expressed the divine as some of us imagine it in Canada.