"The title of "The West Wind" is possibly a reference to the 1819 Percy Bysshe Shelley poem, "Ode to the West Wind", especially possible given Thomson's love of poetry, though Thomson's later canvases are typically believed to have only been titled after his death.According to Trainor, Thomson was not satisfied with the picture, fearing that the flat abstract shapes of the foreground rocks and trees were inconsistent with the atmospheric conception of the background.