Panoramic paintings are massive artworks that reveal a wide, all-encompassing view of a particular subject, often a landscape, military battle, or historical event. They became especially popular in the 19th century in Europe and the United States, inciting opposition from some writers of Romantic poetry. A few have survived into the 21st century and are on public display. Typically shown in rotundas for viewing, panoramas were meant to be so lifelike they confused the spectator between what was real and what was image. Barker's vision was to capture the magnificence of a scene from every angle so as to immerse the spectator completely, and in so doing, blur the line where art stopped and reality began. in his house in 1788, and later in Archers' Hall near the Meadows to public acclaim.

In 1793 Barker moved his panoramas to the first brick panorama rotunda building in the world, in Leicester Square, and made a fortune. Viewers flocked to pay a stiff 3 shillings to stand on a central platform under a skylight, which offered an even lighting, and get an experience that was "panoramic" (an adjective that didn't appear in print until 1813). The extended meaning of a "comprehensive survey" of a subject followed sooner, in 1801. Visitors to Barker's Panorama of London, painted as if viewed from the roof of Albion Mills on the South Bank, could purchase a series of six prints that modestly recalled the experience; end-to-end the prints stretched 3.25 metres. In contrast, the actual panorama spanned 250 square metres.

The main goal of the panorama was to immerse the audience to the point where they could not tell the difference between the canvas and reality, in other words, wholeness. Props were also strategically positioned on the platform where the audience stood and two windows were laid into the roof to allow natural light to flood the canvases.

Two scenes could be exhibited in the rotunda simultaneously; however, the rotunda at Leicester Square was the only one to do so. Houses with single scenes proved more popular to audiences as the fame of the panorama spread. Due to the immense size of the panorama, patrons were given orientation plans to help them navigate the scene. These glorified maps pinpointed key buildings, sites, or events exhibited on the canvas. Typically a team of artists worked on one project with each team specializing in a certain aspect of the painting such as landscapes, people or skies. Though the artists painstakingly documented every detail of a scene, by doing so they created a world complete in and of itself.

The first panoramas depicted urban settings, such as cities, while later panoramas depicted nature and famous military battles. The necessity for military scenes increased in part because so many were taking place. French battles commonly found their way to rotundas thanks to the feisty leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte. Henry Aston's relationship with Bonaparte continued following Bonaparte's exile to Elba, where Henry Aston visited the former emperor. Likewise in America, New York City panoramas found popularity, as well as imports from Barker's rotunda. As painter John Vanderlyn soon found out, French politics did not interest Americans. In particular, his depiction of Louis XVIII's return to the throne did not live two months in the rotunda before a new panorama took its place. The diorama was invented in 1822 by Louis Daguerre and Charles-Marie Bouton, the latter a former student of the renowned French painter Jacques-Louis David. Accomplished with four screens on a roundabout, the illusion captivated 350 spectators at a time for a period of 15 minutes. Painters of the diorama also added their own twist to the panorama's props, but instead of props to make the scenes more real, they incorporated sounds. The alienation of the diorama was caused by the connection the scene drew to art, nature and death. After Daguerre and Bouton's first exhibition in London, one reviewer noted a stillness like that "of the grave." Peter Marshall added the twist to Barker's original creation, which saw success throughout the 19th and into the 20th century. In contrast specifically to the diorama, where the audience seemed to be physically rotated, the moving panorama gave patrons a new perspective, allowing them to "[function] as a moving eye". Unlike its predecessor, the moving panorama required a large canvas and two vertical rollers. Accordingly, patrons from across the social scale flocked to rotundas throughout Europe. The locality paradox also attributed to the arguments of panorama critics. In their earliest forms, panoramas depicted topographical scenes and in so doing, made the sublime accessible to every person with 3 shillings in his or her pocket. The sublime became an everyday thing and therefore, a material commodity. By associating the sublime with the material, the panorama was seen as a threat to romanticism, which was obsessed with the sublime. According to the romantics, the sublime was never supposed to include materiality and by linking the two, panoramas tainted the sublime.

The poet William Wordsworth has long been characterized as an opponent of the panorama, most notably for his allusion to it in Book Seven of The Prelude. It has been argued that Wordsworth's problem with the panorama was the deceit it used to gain popularity. He felt, critics say, that the panorama not only exhibited an immense scene of some kind, but also the weakness of human intelligence.

However, Wordsworth's hatred of the panorama was not limited to its deceit. The panorama's association with the sublime was likewise offensive to the poet as were other spectacles of the period that competed with reality. As a poet, Wordsworth sought to separate his craft from the phantasmagoria enveloping the population. In this context, phantasmagoria refers to signs and other circulated propaganda, including billboards, illustrated newspapers and panoramas themselves. Wordsworth's biggest problem with panoramas was their pretense: the panorama lulled spectators into stupors, inhibiting their ability to imagine things for themselves. Wordsworth wanted people to see the representation depicted in the panorama and appreciate it for what it was – art.

A modern take on the panorama believes the enormous paintings filled a hole in the lives of those who lived during the nineteenth century. Bernard Comment said in his book The Painted Panorama, that the masses needed "absolute dominance" and the illusion offered by the panorama gave them a sense of organization and control. Another rare surviving great-circle panorama is the Panorama Mesdag, completed in 1881 and housed in a purpose-built museum in The Hague, showing the dunes of nearby Scheveningen. Both of these works are considered of interest as they depict domestic scenes of their times. Depictions of warfare were more common as subject matter, an example of which is located at the battlefield of Waterloo, depicting the battle.

An exhibition "Panoramania" was held at the Barbican in the 1980s, with a catalog by Ralph Hyde. The Racławice Panorama, currently located in Wrocław, Poland, is a monumental (15 × 120 metre) panoramic painting depicting the Battle of Racławice, during the Kościuszko Uprising. A panorama of the Battle of Stalingrad is on display at Mamayev Kurgan. Among Franz Roubaud's great panoramas, those depicting the Siege of Sevastopol (1905) and Battle of Borodino (1911) survive, although the former was damaged during the Siege of Sevastopol (1942) and the latter was transferred to Poklonnaya Gora. The Pleven Panorama in Pleven, Bulgaria, depicts the events of the Siege of Plevna in 1877 on a 115×15-metre canvas with a 12-meter foreground.

Five large panoramas survive in North America: the Cyclorama of Jerusalem (a.k.a. the Panorama of Jerusalem at the Moment of Christ's Death) at St. Anne, outside of Quebec City; the Gettysburg Cyclorama depicting Pickett's Charge during the Battle of Gettysburg in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; John Vanderlyn's Panorama of the Garden and Palace of Versailles at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Atlanta Cyclorama, which depicts the Battle of Atlanta, in Atlanta, Georgia. A fifth panorama, also depicting the Battle of Gettysburg, was willed in 1996 to Wake Forest University in North Carolina; it is in poor condition and not on public display. It was purchased in 2007 by a group of North Carolina investors who hope to resell it to someone willing to restore it. Only pieces survive of a massive cyclorama depicting the Battle of Shiloh.

In the area of the moving panorama, there are somewhat more extant, though many are in poor repair and the conservation of such enormous paintings poses very expensive problems. The most notable rediscovered panorama in the United States was the Great Moving Panorama of Pilgrim's Progress, which was found in storage at the York Institute now the Saco Museum in Saco, Maine, by its former curator Tom Hardiman. It was found to incorporate designs by many of the leading painters of its day, including Jasper Francis Cropsey, Frederic Edwin Church, and Henry Courtney Selous (Selous was the in-house painter for the original Barker panorama in London for many years.)

The St. Louis Art Museum owns another moving panorama, which it is conserving in public during the summers of 2011 and 2012. "The Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley"—the only remaining of six known Mississippi River panorama paintings—measures wide by long and was commissioned by an eccentric amateur archaeologist named Montroville W. Dickeson. Judith H. Dobrzynski wrote about the restoration in an article in the Wall Street Journal dated June 27, 2012.

In 1918, the New Bedford Whaling Museum acquired the Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage Round the World, created by artists Benjamin Russell and Caleb Purrington in 1848. At about long and high, it is one of the largest surviving moving panoramas (although far short of the "Three Miles [4800 m] of Canvass" advertised by its creators in their handbills). The museum is currently planning for the conservation of the Grand Panorama. Although in storage, highlights may be seen on the museum's Flickr pages

Another moving panorama was donated to the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection at Brown University Library in 2005. Painted in Nottingham, England around 1860 by John James Story (d. 1900), it depicts the life and career of the great Italian patriot, Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882). The panorama stands about high and long, painted on both sides in watercolor. Numerous battles and other dramatic events in his life are depicted in 42 scenes, and the original narration written in ink survives.

The Arrival of the Hungarians, a vast cyclorama by Árpád Feszty et al., completed in 1894, is displayed at the Ópusztaszer National Heritage Park in Hungary. It was made to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of the 895 conquest of the Carpathian Basin by the Hungarians.

The Cyclorama of Early Melbourne, by artist John Hennings in 1892, still survives albeit having suffered water damage during a fire. Painted from a panoramic sketch of Early Melbourne in 1842 by Samuel Jackson. It places the viewer on top of the partially constructed Scott's Church on Collins Street in the Melbourne CBD. Commissioned to celebrate 50 years of the city of Melbourne, it was displayed in the Melbourne Exhibition Building for nearly 30 years before being taken into storage. Relatively small for a Cyclorama, it measured long and high.

The Biological museum (Stockholm), founded by hunter and taxidermist Gustaf Kolthoff, opened its dioramas to the public in November 1893 and is still an active museum with about 15000 visitors yearly. The museum has panorama paintings by Bruno Liljefors (assisted by Gustaf Fjæstad), Kjell Kolthoff and several hundred preserved animals in their natural habitats.

See also

  • Cinéorama
  • Cyclorama
  • Hanging scroll
  • International Panorama Council
  • Moving panorama
  • Mareorama
  • Myriorama
  • Panorama (perspective)
  • Panstereorama
  • Trans-Siberian Railway Panorama

Notes

References

  • Richard Altick, The Shows of London. New York: Belnap, 1978.
  • Bernard Comment, The Painted Panorama. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1999.
  • Markman Ellis. Spectacles within doors: Panoramas of London in the 1790s. Romanticism 2008, Vol. 14 Issue 2. Modern Language Association International Bibliography Database.
  • Asia Haut. "Reading the Visual." Oxford Art Journal: 32, 2, 2009.
  • Ralph Hyde, Panoramania, 1988 (exhibition catalog)
  • J. Jennifer Jones. Absorbing Hesitation: Wordsworth and the Theory of the Panorama. Studies in Romanticism. 45:3, 2006. Modern Language Association International Bibliography Database.
  • Gabriele Koller, (ed.), Die Welt der Panoramen. Zehn Jahre Internationale Panorama Konferenzen / The World of Panoramas. Ten Years of International Panorama Conferences, Amberg 2003
  • Martin Meisel. Realizations. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1983.
  • Robert Miles. "Introduction: Gothic Romance as Visual Technology." Gothic Technologies: Visuality in the Romantic Era. Ed. Robert Miles. 2005. Praxis Series. 31 Jan. 2010. https://archive.today/20121215042002/http://romantic.arhu.umd.edu/praxis/gothic/thomas/thomas.html
  • Stephan Oettermann, The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium (MIT Press)
  • Sophie Thomas. "Making Visible: The Diorama, the Double and the (Gothic) subject." Gothic Technologies: Visuality in the Romantic Era. Ed. Robert Miles. 2005. Praxis Series. 31 Jan. 2010. https://archive.today/20121215042002/http://romantic.arhu.umd.edu/praxis/gothic/thomas/thomas.html
  • Scott Wilcox. "Panorama." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, 2007. 9 Feb. 2010. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T065087>
  • Scott Barnes Wilcox, The Panorama and Related Exhibitions in London. M. Litt. University of Edinburgh, 1976.
  • "The 'Panorama'": Edinburgh's panorama
  • Panorama of London from Albion Mills: a semi-circular view in hand watercolored prints
  • Museum of London website Panoramania!
  • Website of the International Panorama Council IPC listing all existing panoramas and cycloramas worldwide
  • Garibaldi & the Risorgimento
  • Thomas -"Making Visible: The Diorama, the Double and the (Gothic) Subject"- Gothic Technologies: Visuality in the Romantic Era - Praxis Series - Romantic Circles
  • "Unlimiting the Bounds": the Panorama and the Balloon View
  • Mobile Cyclorama . Virtual Panoramic 360° View Paintings