Right and Left

Two goldeneye ducks fill the sky in this dramatic scene by Winslow Homer, painted in 1909 just a year before he died. The birds have been caught by a hunter's shotgun blast, and the title "Right and Left" is a hunting phrase for firing both barrels in quick succession to hit two targets. One duck already hangs limp with its head dropping down, while the other flares its wings in a last desperate motion. Down in the lower left, a tiny flash of red and the faint shape of a hunter in his boat almost disappear into the rolling gray waves.

The point of view is what gives this painting its punch. Homer places us out in the storm alongside the ducks, watching their final seconds rather than standing safely on shore. Cold grays and choppy Atlantic swells fill the canvas, echoing the wild Maine coast where Homer spent his last years working in near solitude. He built his reputation on plainspoken, unsentimental images of nature, and this one carries a quiet tension. We are left unsure whether we side with the falling birds or with the shooter who took aim, and that lingering question is the whole point.