But for many foreign visitors and immigrants—particularly a panoply of artists—slavery was a more intrusive and insistent presence in their experience of the country. It not only drew their eye, it confronted them with the challenge of how one could adequately represent it.

British immigrant Benjamin Henry Latrobe became one of the most influential architects in nineteenth-century America, renowned for his design of the White House and part of the Capitol. His first two years in the United States were spent in Virginia and during that brief time he grew to detest the slavery he encountered every day. His March 1798 sketch with the sarcastic title of “An overseer doing his duty” depicted a signature scene of southern slave labor, juxtaposing the strenuous work of the two women to the slouching and smoking indolence of the white driver.

Few people glimpsed Latrobe’s private southern sketches. The same couldn’t be said for the work of British artist Eyre Crowe—although his troubling scenes of slavery in Virginia were, for the most part, only available for viewing across the Atlantic.

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