Of the many subjects which MacGeorge painted in the Galloway region of south-west Scotland, this one is among the most ambitious. It shows a family cutting peat from a bog or ‘moss’. Peat is made of compressed and decomposed vegetable matter, and was usually collected in springtime to be cut into blocks and then spread out to dry before being used as domestic fuel. The artist’s treatment of this subject is quite naturalistic, any possible social commentary on the harshness of rural life being muted or hidden. His approach to these everyday subjects is similar to that of his Dutch contemporaries. MacGeorge may well have encountered works by the Hague School artists while studying in Belgium or at the International Exhibition in Glasgow in 1888.