The labour of the two men in Log-cutting in the Woods, set within a rich landscape, exemplifies Watson’s belief in the ideal relationship between human beings and nature: one of respectful interdependence. They harvest timber from the forest, but do so without endangering the ongoing health of the natural world.

This was one of eleven landscapes that he showed at the 1894 Spring Exhibition of the Art Association of Montreal (now the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), where it won the $100 prize for the best seascape or landscape in the show.