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Right and Left

Winslow Homer American
1909
Not on view
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.
Right and Left is widely regarded as one of the most powerful and innovative paintings in the history of American art. Homer’s second-to-last oil painting, the work has been interpreted as a virtuosic depiction of expert duck-hunting, a scene of potent conflict between man and nature, and a meditation on the artist’s own mortality. By capturing a life-and-death moment for the depicted goldeneye ducks—puffs of smoke and a flash of light from a shotgun signal the damage caused by the minuscule sportsman in the canoe at left—Homer ruminates on unnatural endings, much as he had decades earlier in Sharpshooter (on view in the first gallery). Compositionally complex and emotionally piercing, this late work reveals the artist’s ability to distill universal themes in surprising formal language.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Right and Left
  • Artist: Winslow Homer (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine)
  • Date: 1909
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 28 1/4 x 48 3/8 in. (71.8 x 122.9 cm)
    Framed: 41 1/2 x 61 3/4 x 4 in. (105.4 x 156.8 x 10.2 cm)
  • Credit Line: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of the Avalon Foundation (1951.8.1)
  • Rights and Reproduction: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C,
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing