Writing to the Argus newspaper on 1891, the young Australian landscape painter Arthur Streeton noted that Walker’s painting ‘impresses me very strongly as being a most refined combination of realism and poetry. It reflects very beautifully a man whose soul was filled with tenderness and true love and understanding of nature. It is art of the very highest order, and filled with the refinement of an individual mind’. The right of way was first shown at London’s Royal Academy in 1875 and was the last painting that Frederick Walker ever exhibited; for he died of tuberculosis at the age of 34 while the picture was still hanging on the walls of the Royal Academy.