Former professor John d’Entremont and art historian Kathleen Placidi to discuss Flavius Fisher’s ‘Dismal Swamp’

Flavius J. Fisher, Dismal Swamp, ca. 1858, oil on canvas
Gift of Mrs. Robert N. Winfree, 1976

Art historian Kathleen Placidi and former Randolph professor John d’Entremont will give the lecture “Fugitives Hiding in Plain Sight: Reflections on Flavius Fisher’s Dismal Swamp” at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 22. 

At a time when draconian enforcement of the federal Fugitive Slave Act was dramatically escalating sectional tensions, viewers of Virginia artist Flavius Fisher’s Dismal Swamp (c. 1858) knew they were seeing far more than a landscape painting. 

The Great Dismal Swamp was both a site of commercial exploitation and a notorious refuge for people escaping slavery. Some fugitives were maroons living deep within the swamp’s forbidding interior; others lived along its periphery, openly hired by employers who asked few questions and benefited from highly motivated people who worked hard for low pay.

The 1850s were a time of crisis for these refugees, and for others hiding in plain sight in many Southern cities. Government crackdowns made places of refuge increasingly insecure and daily life more fraught with fear. 

Placidi and d’Entremont will use Fisher’s “Dismal Swamp” as a launching pad to explore these issues, crucial to the coming of the Civil War and hauntingly relevant to the political crisis of our own time.

This lecture, made possible through the generosity of Ann van de Graaf ’74, is free and open to the public.