The subject comes from Coventry Patmore's poem of the same title which had been published in 1844 and received an eloquent reading from Rossetti at the first meeting of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood four years later. Patmore's poetry mirrored the Pre-Raphaelites' own intensity of observation and detail and he became both the Brotherhood's favourite poet and a close friend of Millais. The poem tells how the acquaintance between poor Maud, the woodman's daughter, and the squire's son leads eventually to her seduction and ends in tragedy. Here Millais illustrates the lines:
'She went merely to think she helped;
And, whilst he hack'd and saw'd,
The rich squire's son, a young boy then,
For whole days, as if awed,
Stood by, and gazed alternately
At Gerald, and at Maud.
He sometimes, in a sullen tone,
Would offer fruits, and she,
Always received his gifts with an air
So unreserved and free,
That half-feigned distance soon became Familiarity.'

The transparency of the picture's bright colours suggests that Millais painted The Woodman's daughter using the Pre-Raphaelite technique of painting onto a wet white ground which did not permit alterations. He had long abandoned this way of painting by 1886, when the picture was bought by his half brother Henry Hodgkinson. Hodgkinson asked him to repaint the head of the little girl (thought by Patmore to look like 'a vulgar little slut') and Millais also repainted her hands and feet. Discolouration of the repaint is now very noticeable, resulting in the darker aura around these areas.