The right of way

The Right of Way, completed in 1875 and now in the National Gallery of Victoria, was one of Frederick Walker's last major oils before his death in 1875 from tuberculosis. Walker had by this point moved away from pure social subjects toward compositions that blended genre painting with pastoral landscape, combining figures in rural settings to evoke both the particular and the timeless. The title refers to the legal concept of a public footpath across private land, a subject of ongoing controversy in Victorian England as landowners increasingly fenced common routes. Walker's sympathy clearly lay with ordinary people asserting their traditional access to the countryside. The painting reflects the influence of the Millet and the Barbizon school, filtered through Walker's thoroughly English sensibility, and was widely praised at the time of its exhibition.

Walker used a warm tonality appropriate to an outdoor rural scene, with dappled light across the path and figures. The paint surface is more varied than in his earlier work, with impasto in the foliage contrasting against the smoother treatment of skin and linen. Compositional balance is achieved through the careful placement of standing and moving figures along the diagonal path.