In May 1908 Homer suffered temporary impairment of his speech and muscular control as the effects of a mild stroke; on June 4 he wrote his brother Charles that "I can paint as well as ever.

"[3] Although he never completely recovered, Homer was well enough to attempt a major work, and it is probably Right and Left that he referred to in a letter to his brother Charles dated December 8, 1908: "I am painting when it is light enough on a most surprising picture".

[7] In Beam's telling, Homer stood atop a cliff at Prouts Neck while his neighbor Will Googins, fired blank charges in his direction from a rowboat offshore.

[10] Though the painting represents violent action, its formal aesthetic is that of sharply focused detachment,[10] and has been described by Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr. of the National Gallery of Art as "a staggeringly beautiful and almost oriental arrangement of birds--just abstract shapes against bands of the subtlest cream and grey".

[11] The design consists of four horizontal bands of sea and sky which are connected by a series of vertical and diagonal shapes formed by the ducks' bodies— the one at left (male) struggling to ascend, its partner in a similar position but turned 90 degrees, already falling limp— and wave crests.

[7][13] Upon viewing the painting in New York, its first owner, Randal Morgan, asked several questions regarding Homer's intent: he inquired as to the direction of the largest wave, and the cause of the disturbance in the water at the front of the picture, which he believed was the impetus for the ducks' movement to leave their feeding.

[9][14] For art historian John Wilmerding, the painting embodied "a sense of the momentary and the universal, mortality illuminated by showing these creatures at the juncture of life and death".

[1] It has also been suggested that in addition to summarizing interests that were lifelong for Homer, as well as referring to the works of previous artists, a modern and ironic meaning may have been intended as well: in 1908 air travel was a novel and transforming human achievement, one fraught with the adventure and danger of flight.