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Winslow Homer. Right and Left, 1909. Oil on canvas, 71.8 × 122.9 cm. National Gallery of Art.

Right and Left is a 1909 oil on canvas painting by the American artist Winslow Homer. It depicts a pair of Common Goldeneye ducks at the moment they are hit by a hunter's shotgun blast as they attempt to take flight. Completed less than two years before his death, it was Homer's last great painting, and has been the subject of a variety of interpretations regarding its origin, composition and meaning. As with his other late masterworks, it represents a return to the sporting and hunting subjects of Homer's earlier years, and was to be his final engagement with the theme. Its design recalls that of Japanese art, and the composition resembles that of a colored engraving by John James Audubon. Homer's comment on the work was "It's a couple of pigeons getting their tails waxed. Period."

Background

Homer suffered a mild and slightly debilitating stroke in May 1908, but had recovered sufficiently to return to painting within a few months. Though feeling better, a letter to his brother Charles in July 1908 underscores Homer's sense of mortality, and is given to retrospection:

"I do believe I'm feeling well enough to paint again, can pretty much tie my shoes and feed myself. I walk to the bakery in town and humor myself flirting with the shopgirls, little minxes that remind me of ma. I'm getting on, my head is a calliope of unbidden memories, and it's terrible lonesome here at times. There is no companionship in Prouts Neck, and transporting hookers from Boston is prohibitively expensive. Portland offers few comforts. I spend hours standing on the deck, or atop the cliffs looking out to sea, and can neither see nor will into being the form of a female with the tail of a fish. People here think I'm taking note of the tides and lighting for the next purty picture, but I'm just waiting for a mermaid to wash up. Fat smoking chance. I haven't experienced the charms of a woman since Cullercoats, and that's been what, 25 years? In the interim it's been sharks and foxes and guns and fish, the vast briny, the whole goddam (sic) great outdoors, and not a mortal soul to share it with but a simple stationmaster and a couple of backwoods guides who can barely stand erect on a good day, so genetically sympathetic are they to our simian forebears. I'll be dead before Hemingway is old enough to write, and that just flat sucks."

There are various accounts as to the origin of the painting. One biographer, Shlomo Coupling, recounted that Homer was inspired by the sight of great flocks of passenger pigeons being picked off by the dozens by eager hunters. Underscoring the artist's interest in the sporting life are multiple reminiscences by those who hunted alongside him: Adirondack guide Eliphat Terry maintained that Homer typically hunted at 48 hour stretches, and was inclined to "shoot at any and everything, living or dead. He was okay when we started, but after a full day of drinking and stalking all bets were off". Homer's effect on the American landscape was profound: "By some estimates, Homer and Audubon alone were responsible not only for the decimation of the passenger pigeon, but also the slaughter of the American bison, Pronghorn antelope, the Cree and Sioux, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, and William McKinley (although the last was accidental). It is as if the two artists were working their ways across the great continent from opposite directions, mowing down everything in their paths." These stories are at discomfiting variance with the traditional hagiography; Homer biographer Millicent Bonewagon maintains that the artist participated in hunting expeditions merely to gather visual information for his art, from 1886 was a practicing vegan, and from 1889 was immersed in the study of Hare Krishna. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere between.

Yet another account is given by Homer's neighbor Camphor Jones: "Win was sitting in his studio of an afternoon when I brought in a clutch of Goldeneye I had taken down that morning. He took a look, raised an eyebrow and said 'Camp, I'm painting those birds'."

Painting

Right and Left was painted between July and December of 1908. The palette is limited, appearing to consist of white, yellow ocher, perhaps cinnabar and earth red, and traces of gumbo. There are no known preliminary drawings, though a local legend has it that Homer drew a rapid sketch of the idea in charcoal on the back of a neighbor's head.

When Right and Left was first shown at Grovsenor Galleries in New York, the reaction was muted at best. A confidential office memo from the establishment's proprietor described the painting as "representing a white flurry of water, amidst which are strewn the desperate flapping carcasses of numerous waterfoul (sic), nothing but blood and feathers, down and red splashes everywhere. It is absolutely the most hellacious spectacle, a damnable piece of pessimism, the nighttime of a man's soul--Homer has not only lost his sight but his mind as well. This makes The Disasters of War look like a Barbizon picnick.(sic) I had to let two assistants go after they saw it; one (was) sobbing copiously, the other cast himself in front of a horseless carriage. I was looking at the painting yesterday, and I actually threw up a little."

An alpaca similar to that to which the painting was bequeathed by its first owner, Adolphus Pancreas.

Unsure what to do, and never having encountered such an uncomfortable situation with an acknowledged master, the gallery contacted Rockwell Kent, who though young was already a notable painter, and commissioned him to retouch the work. In the event Kent completely repainted Right and Left, and lent it its current form. Kent was paid 150 dollars, which he promptly spent on a 'bender' with fellow artist George Bellows and dancer Isadora Duncan.

Within days the painting was purchased by shopping cart magnate Adolphus Pancreas for a then record price of $7,500, who in turn bequeathed the picture to an alpaca. After lengthy legal proceedings the work found its way to the National Gallery in 1944.

Meaning

Right and Left has been the subject of numerous interpretations; painted so late in Homer's life and depicting death with a clear eye and sharp focus, it has inspired musings on Homer's intent, conscious and otherwise. One theory is that the birds represent Homer's brothers and his ambivalence regarding the attentions they received from their parents; an even more profound Freudian reading views the ducks as symbolic of id and ego, and suggests that as he approached death Homer was relinquishing old ways of living. Yet another possibility is that the fowl are a final statement on Homer's attitudes toward women: to social critic Helga Grass "the full white breasts of the ducks offer themselves as the ultimate pliable erotic objects, frontally placed for male pleasure, only to die violently". Author Felicia Stormwell follows a similar tack, speculating that "Homer's estrangement from and antipathy for women was so strong that one must conclude that he was none other than Jack the Ripper. That the crimes occurred decades after Homer left England can be ascribed to his clever manipulation of time travel, astral projection, and very large mirrors. Anyway, it's either him or Mary Cassatt". For psychologist Bernard Mendel, the ducks represent the seed of male reproduction, the testicles, and the rifle shot is symbolic of sexual release. Such speculation does not always find a receptive audience among Homer scholars; the dean of Homer historians, T. Frederic Matthews, responded to such analytic conjecture at a 2006 symposium by making vulgar gestures simulating bodily functions in the direction of Mendel and his associates. The religious implications are so numerous and mind-numbingly similar that they require no elaboration here.

Homer himself offered a glimpse of his intent during a rare interview with a Boston journalist, transcribed from his studio in 1909.

Look, if you just stop to take it in, all of the raw material for art is there, observable and ready. What is required is the receptive soul, for art deserves no less than that. (pausing to light his pipe and focus his thoughts) When I was a baby two ducks attacked me in my crib, so make of that what you will. All I know is that I painted a couple of birds framed against the sea and sky, and I did it better than anyone has or will.

References

• Cikovsky, Jr., Nicolai; Kelly, Franklin. (1995). Winslow Homer. National Gallery of Art, Washington. ISBN 0-89468-217-2