Lake of the Dismal Swamp
John Gadsby Chapman
1825
Oil on canvas
Virginia Historical Society
Lora Robins Collection of Virginia Art

One of the first artists to depict the Great Dismal was the Virginian John Gadsby Chapman, who in 1825, at the age of only seventeen, painted as a fire board this scene of Lake Drummond, the swamp's principal feature. Chapman no doubt selected this subject because of the fame of the swamp that followed the publication of Thomas Moore's poem. In looking beyond the foreground of this image to the still and expansive lake of the swamp, one senses the special nature of this landscape. An early visitor wrote that the first appearance of the lake "absorbs or expells every other idea, and creates a quiet, solemn pleasure, that I never felt from any similar circumstances."