A Visit from the Old Mistress
1876
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 45.7 × 61 cm
- Status
- In Museum Collection
- Collect24 Art ID
- C24-134231
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 communiti…
Provenance
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans
Registry history
- 1876 — Recorded in the collection of Smithsonian American Art Museum
Registered on Collect24
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