Panoramic painting
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.
In China, panoramic paintings are an important subset of handscroll paintings, with some famous examples being Along the River During the Qingming Festival and Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangtze River.
History
The word "panorama", a portmanteau of the Greek words ‘pano’ and ‘horama’, was coined by the Irish painter Robert Barker in 1787. While walking on Calton Hill overlooking Edinburgh, the idea struck him and he obtained a patent for it the same year. Barker's patent included the first coining of the word panorama. 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.Barker's first panorama was of Edinburgh. He exhibited the Panorama of Edinburgh From Calton Hill in his house in 1788, and later in Archers' Hall near the Meadows to public acclaim. The first panorama disappointed Barker, not because of its lack of success, but because it fell short of his vision. The Edinburgh scene was not a full 360 degrees; it was semi-circular.
In 1792 he used the term to describe his paintings of Edinburgh, Scotland, shown on a cylindrical surface, which he soon was exhibiting in London, as "The Panorama".
After the commercial but limited technical success of his first panorama, Barker and his son Henry Aston Barker completed a panorama of London from the Albion Mills. A reduced version was originally shown in their house with a larger one on display later.
To fulfill his dream of a 360 panorama, Barker and his son purchased a rotunda at Leicester Square. christened the new rotunda, all 250 square meters of it. The previously reduced version, in contrast, measured only 137 square meters.
The rotunda at Leicester Square was composed of two levels, although they varied in size. Spectators observed the scenes from a platform in the center of the rotunda.
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". 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. To accomplish this, all borders of the canvas had to be concealed. Props were also strategically positioned in the foreground of the scene to increase realism. Two windows laid into the roof allowed natural light to flood the canvases, also making the illusion more realistic.
Two scenes could be exhibited at the rotunda in Leicester Square simultaneously; however, the rotunda at Leicester Square was the only rotunda to house two panoramas. Houses with single scenes proved more popular. While at Leicester Square, the audience was herded down a long, dark corridor to clear their minds. The idea was to have spectators more or less forget what they just saw, leaving their minds blank to view the second scene.
Despite the audience's "mind blanking" walk in the dark, panoramas were designed to have a lingering effect upon the viewer. For some, this attribute placed panoramas in the same category as propaganda of the period: no more than an illusion meant to deceive.
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 from Bankside, 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. 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.
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 and up a long flight of stairs 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.
File:Detail from Rudolph Ackermann's painting of 1829 Colosseum.jpg|thumb|left|280px|Detail from Bird's Eye View from the Staircase & the Upper Part of the Pavilion in the Colosseum, Regent's Park , a coloured aquatint by Rudolph Ackermann. Sometimes the viewing position was physically recreated in the panorama's rotunda. The distant image of London shown here is the painted backdrop of the panorama.
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: "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. Pierre Prévost 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.
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.
File:Battery of Raevsky.jpg|thumb|300px|Raevsky Battery at Borodino, a fragment of Roubaud's panoramic painting
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 dynasty. 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, 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 " as a moving eye".
The panorama evolved somewhat and in 1809, the moving panorama graced the stage in Edinburgh. Unlike its predecessor, the moving panorama required a large canvas and two vertical rollers. The scene or variation of scenes passed before the audience between the rollers, eliminating the need to showcase and view the panoramas in a rotunda. Peter Marshall added the twist to Barker's original creation, which saw success throughout the 19th and into the 20th century.
Despite the success of the moving panorama, Barker's original vision maintained popularity through various artists, including Pierre Prévost, Charles Langlois and Henri Félix Emmanuel Philippoteaux among others. The revival in popularity for the panorama peaked in the 1880s, having spread through Europe and North America.