A Visit from the Old Mistress

A Visit from the Old Mistress is an 1876 painting by American artist ,Winslow Homer. It was one of several works that Homer created during a mid-1870s visit to Virginia, where he had served as a war correspondent during the Civil War. Scholars have noted that the painting's composition is taken from Homer's earlier painting "Prisoners from the Front," which depicts a group of captive Confederate soldiers defiantly regarding a Union officer. It, along with Homer's other paintings of black southern life from this period, have been praised as an "invaluable record of an important segment of life in Virginia during the Reconstruction." 