A Visit from the Old Mistress

Winslow Homer, A Visit from the Old Mistress, 1876, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans, 1909.7.28
Copied Winslow Homer, A Visit from the Old Mistress, 1876, oil on canvas, 18 x 24 in. (45.7 x 61.0 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans, 1909.7.28
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Artwork Details

Title
A Visit from the Old Mistress
Artist
Date
1876
Location
Dimensions
18 x 24 in. (45.7 x 61.0 cm.)
Credit Line
Gift of William T. Evans
Mediums
Mediums Description
oil on canvas
Classifications
Subjects
  • Figure group
  • African American
  • History — United States — Black History
  • Allegory — civic — injustice
  • Architecture Interior — domestic
Object Number
1909.7.28
Linked Open Data
https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1909.7.28

Artwork Description

A Visit from the Old Mistress captures a tentative encounter in the postwar South. The freed slaves are no longer obliged to greet their former mistress with welcoming gestures, and one remains seated as she would not have been allowed to do before the war. Winslow Homer composed the work from sketches he had made while traveling through Virginia; it conveys a silent tension between two communities seeking to understand their future. The formal equivalence between the standing figures suggests the balance that the nation hoped to find in the difficult years of Reconstruction.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006

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