Hector Caffieri painted several pictures of the lock on the Thames at Cookham, where he had a house. This painting appears to be around 1890, from the hats, about the time that Stanley Spencer was born (1891) and Jerome K Jerome published Three Men in a Boat (1889). Some quotes from Jerome seem apposite:

'We went through Maidenhead quickly, and then eased up, and took leisurely that grand reach beyond Boulter's and Cookham locks. Cliveden Woods still wore their dainty dress of spring, and rose up from the water's edge, in one long harmony of blended shades of fairy green. In its unbroken loveliness this is, perhaps, the sweetest stretch of all the river, and lingeringly we slowly drew our little boat away from its deep peace.' 

'I do hate steam launches: I suppose every rowing man does. I never see a steam launch but I feel I should like to lure it to a lonely part of the river, and there, in the silence and the solitude, strangle it.' 

The tranquility of the scene, so English, is well caught by this artist of French descent and education.