Panoramic Painting - History

History

The word "panorama", from Greek pan ("all") horama ("view") was coined by the Irish painter Robert Barker in 1792 to describe his paintings of Edinburgh, Scotland shown on a cylindrical surface, which he soon was exhibiting in London, as "The Panorama".

In 1793 Barker moved his panoramas to the first purpose-built panorama 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.

Despite the success of Barker's first panorama in Leicester Square, it was neither his first attempt at the craft nor his first exhibition. In 1788 Barker showcased his first panorama. It was only a semi-circular view of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Barker's inability to bring the image to a full 360 degrees disappointed him. To realize his true vision, Barker and his son, Henry Aston Barker, took on the task of painting a scene of the Albion Mills. The first version of what was to be Barker's first successful panorama was displayed in the Barker home and measured only 137 square metres.

Barker's accomplishment involved sophisticated manipulations of perspective not encountered in the panorama's predecessors, the wide-angle "prospect" of a city familiar since the 16th century, or Wenceslas Hollar's "long view" of London, etched on several contiguous sheets. When Barker first patented his technique in 1787, he had given it a French title: La Nature à Coup d’ Oeil ("Nature at a glance"). A sensibility to the "picturesque" was developing among the educated class, and as they toured picturesque districts, like the Lake District, they might have in the carriage with them a large lens set in a picture frame, a "landscape glass" that would contract a wide view into a "picture" when held at arm's length.

Pierre Prévost (painter) (1764–1823) was the first important French panorama painter. Among his 17 panoramas, the most famous describe the cities of Rome, Naples, Amsterdam, Jerusalem, Athens and also the battle of Wagram.

Barker made many efforts to increase the realism of his scenes. To fully immerse the audience in the scene, all borders of the canvas were concealed. 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. Because the Leicester Square rotunda housed two panoramas, Barker needed a mechanism to clear the minds of the audience as they moved from one panorama to the other. To accomplish this, patrons walked down a dark corridor where their minds were supposed to be refreshed for viewing the new scene. 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.

To create a panorama, artists travelled to the sites and sketched the scenes multiple times. 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. After completing their sketches, the artists typically consulted other paintings, of average size, to add further detail. Martin Meisel described the panorama perfectly in his book Realizations: “In its impact, the Panorama was a comprehensive form, the representation not of the segment of a world, but of a world entire seen from a focal height.” 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 Barker's travels to France during the Peace of Amiens led him to court, where Bonaparte accepted him. Henry Aston created panoramas of Bonaparte's battles including The Battle of Waterloo, which saw so much success that he retired after finishing it. Henry Aston's relationship with Bonaparte continued following Bonaparte's exile to Elba, where Henry Aston visited the former emperor.

Outside of England and France, the popularity of panoramas depended on the type of scene displayed. Typically, people wanted to see images from their own countries or from England. This principle rang true in Switzerland, where views of the Alps dominated. 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.

Barker's Panorama was hugely successful and spawned a series of "immersive" panoramas: the Museum of London's curators found mention of 126 panoramas that were exhibited between 1793 and 1863. In Europe, panoramas were created of historical events and battles, notably by the Russian painter Franz Roubaud. Most major European cities featured more than one purpose-built structure hosting panoramas. These large fixed-circle panoramas declined in popularity in the latter third of the nineteenth century, though in the United States they experienced a partial revival; in this period, they were more commonly referred to as cycloramas.

The panorama competed for audiences most frequently with the diorama, a slightly curved or flat canvas extending 22 by 14 metres. 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.

Unlike the panorama where spectators had to move to view the scene, the scenes on the diorama moved so the audience could remain seated. Accomplished with four screens on a roundabout, the illusion captivated 350 spectators at a time for a period of 15 minutes. The images rotated in a 73 degree arc, focusing on two of the four scenes while the remaining two were prepared, which allowed the canvases to be refreshed throughout the course of the show. While topographical detail was crucial to panoramas, as evidenced by the teams of artists who worked on them, the effect of the illusion took precedence with the diorama. 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. Another similarity to the panorama was the effect the diorama had on its audience. Some patrons experienced a stupor, while others were alienated by the spectacle. 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.” To remedy this tomblike atmosphere Daguerre painted both sides of the canvas, known as “the double effect.” By lighting both painted sides of the canvas, light was transmitted and reflected producing a type of transparency producing the effect of time passing. This effect gave the crew operating the lights and turning the roundabout a new type of control over the audience than the panorama ever had.

In Britain and particularly in the US, the panoramic ideal was intensified by unrolling a canvas-backed scroll past the viewer in a Moving Panorama, an alteration of an idea that was familiar in the hand-held landscape scrolls of Song China. First unveiled in 1809 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the moving panorama required a large canvas and two vertical rollers to be set up on a stage. Peter Marshall added the twist to Barker’s original creation, which saw success throughout the 19th and into the 20th century. The scene or variation of scenes passed between the rollers, eliminating the need to showcase and view the panorama in a rotunda. A precursor to "moving" pictures (See motion picture.), the moving panorama incorporated music, sound effects and stand-alone cut-outs to create their mobile effect. Such a traveling motion allowed for new types of scenes, such as chase sequences, that could not be produced so well in either the diorama or the panorama. 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.”