A Visit from the Old Mistress
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.This landmark work from Homer’s Reconstruction-era period stands as one of the most compelling representations of race relations in nineteenth-century painting. In a frieze-like composition set in a murky interior, three Black freedwomen and a child appear in a tense encounter with the rigidly defined figure of an elderly White woman in widow’s black—presumably the onetime “mistress" who must now pay for their labor. In its powerful evocation of lingering conflicts and traumas—with women and slavery at its center—the painting resonates with other images inspired by the artist’s postwar visits to Virginia. Each offers a distinctive reflection on the future livelihoods of Black Americans.
Artwork Details
- Title: A Visit from the Old Mistress
- Artist: Winslow Homer (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine)
- Date: 1876
- Culture: American
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 18 x 24 in. (45.7 x 61.0 cm)
Framed: 32 1/2 x 38 5/8 in. (82.6 x 98.1 cm) - Credit Line: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., Gift of William T. Evans (1909.7.28)
- Rights and Reproduction: Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Curatorial Department: The American Wing