Winifred Quinnell attended the South Kensington School of Art, London from 1886 to 1887 and settled in Queensland after her marriage to Thomas Rumney. She taught in Queensland, travelled to Victoria and Tasmania and returned to Queensland where, by 1908, she was teaching in Cairns. The scale and ambition of Barron Falls is unusual, as many women artists in Australia at this time were content with producing flower studies.

The painting has an almost pre-Raphaelite intensity in the detailed rendering of the water surging over rocks.