The nineteenth-century art historian and critic Henry Tuckerman wrote of John Frederick Kensett in his Book of the Artists (1867): "In some of his pictures the dense growth of trees on a rocky ledge, with the dripping stones and mouldy lichens, are rendered with the literal minuteness of one of the old Flemish painters. It is on this account that Kensett enjoys an exceptional reputation among the extreme advocates of the Pre-Raphaelite school." Tuckerman perfectly describes The Mountain Stream, a work that bears witness to Kensett's close observation of nature.