Allan Edson’s Lumbermen on the Saint Maurice illustrates the early stages of delivering cut timber from forest to mill. Set against the autumnal foliage of rural Quebec, Edson’s painting provides a rosy, warm view of a trade that, by 1868, had become one of the most lucrative and powerful industries in Canada. An industry dependent on the land, logging and the lumbermen who worked to fell and transport the logs became in many ways synonymous with the Canadian landscape in the nineteenth century, making Lumbermen on the Saint Maurice a national portrait of sorts.