[3] Whether he had been back to Virginia and had observed a scene like the one in A Visit, or if he had simply composed it from memories assembled during his time in the war, or by means of studio sets, is therefore a matter of speculation.

[2] Some scholars maintain that Homer did, in fact, make earlier visits to Virginia in 1875 and 1876,[5][7] wherein he came to understand blacks not merely as "a humorous object," as they seem to be in some of his Civil War-era sketches, but as serious and fundamentally human subjects in art, paving the way for his much more serious compositions in the 1870s.

[3] Scholars have observed that the composition of A Visit from the Old Mistress is nearly identical to that in Homer's earlier work Prisoners from the Front, wherein a band of recently captured Confederate soldiers are shown standing defiantly in the face of their Union captor.

In their solemnity of demeanor, the humility of their expression, and the evident awe which the presence of the old mistress inspires, there is a blending of pathos and humor, which belongs to the situation, and is all the better for not having been injected into it.

Morgan writes that Homer's "representations of African-Americans as ragged women" were designed to reassure white viewers that there was "no potential to upset existing hierarchies of power.

Mapping distinctions in physiques—mistress aloof, ex-slaves slumped; dress—hers fine, theirs ragged; and site—the same old cabin; A Visit from the Old Mistress fixed in place a lateral hierarchy.

This understanding of the painting is challenged by other modern critics such as Sidney Kaplan, who writes: A blonde, curled mistress, with parasol and lace, seems to expect 'friendship' from her former slaves, but the black matriarch, her great arms at her sides, stands like a cofferdam.

Her glance is rejection, a withering of the white delusion of her simplicity, while the eyes and mouths of her family shadow forth nuances of her dignity, scorn, and restraint.