Francis Danby ARA (1793-1861) was an Irish painter of the Romantic era. His imaginative, dramatic landscapes were comparable to those of John Martin. Danby initially developed his imaginative style while he was the central figure in a group of artists who have come to be known as the Bristol School.

This oil painting shows a mill on the riverside near Bristol. The mill uses water to power the machinery inside it. In this instance, the mill is making a form of tobacco called snuff, by grinding tobacco down into a powdered form. Snuff is snorted instead of smoked. Tobacco was brought to Bristol from the Caribbean (where it was grown on plantations by enslaved Africans). Once in Bristol, the tobacco was made into snuff in mills or twists in factories and sold by tobacconists.