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Lecture 2:

Listen to part of a lecture in an art history class. The professor has been discussing 19th century european art.

Yesterday, during our discussion of realism in art, I made reference to some new art forms. And we’ll be talking about several of these over the next few days. uh, prints, watercolors, landscapes. uh, but I wanna start with when you’re probably less familiar with panorama as uh, panorama, as were huge canvases, sometimes several stories tall. and they were intended to be viewed in a circle. In other words, they surrounded the viewer.

Uh, incidentally, the word panorama, which is part of our everyday language now, uh, was actually invented by a friend of robert barker, who was the first successful painter of this new art form. marker painted the first official panorama in 1787. his accomplishment was remarkable for two reasons. first, he figured out how to paint a circular painting so that it looked realistic. without going into all the details. A barker found a solution for the complicated perspective problems that this kind of painting presented. the other key thing is that barker recognized the need for a special viewing space to display this new kind of a painting. in fact, a a new kind of building. other people at that time were coming up with similar ideas. But barker was the one who had the foresight to get a patent for it, which meant he had the right to the invention. he described it as an apparatus for displaying views of nature at large. the patent description said that the building was to be circular, and it was only to allow light in from above.

It even specified the height of the platforms people would stand on and how far away they should be from the painting. when barker opened his new panorama building in London in 1794, it was a big hit, but he didn’t have a monopoly on his invention for long as his license expired in 1801. and in fact, after 1800, panorama as multiplied rapidly, practically every major city in europe and North America had special buildings for displaying them. most of the buildings and paintings have disappeared. So we don’t talk about panorama as much anymore. but they were a very popular form of entertainment in their day, which doesn’t mean that they weren’t good art. many panorama as were painted under the supervision of first rate artists who were aiming for a faithful reproduction of an actual scene. panoramic artists developed a number of techniques to uh, intensify the illusion of reality for viewers, like special lighting effects. and and they would hide the edges of the painting with curtains. So there was no appearance of a frame or border at the Top or bottom. sometimes they placed plants and trees in the space between the viewer and the painting. in that respect, you see, uh, panorama as were very much part of this new movement of realism.

Of course, paintings of large vistas had been done before. It was a common subject for renaissance painters, but panorama painters transformed them by offering a full 360 degree view. and the choice of perspective, using a a bird’s eye view on an aerial perspective was new. it’s probably not a coincidence that hot air balloons made their debut around that time, or that the first high rise buildings were going up. as one writer put it, people were developing a panoramic consciousness.

interestingly, a popular subject for panorama, as was detailed views of the cities in which they were exhibited. it can seem strange today that people were fascinated by detailed recreation of places they already knew. but the fact that the scenes were familiar was apparently part of the fascination. one panorama that millions went to see was called a view of Paris from the roof of that will a res. now, anyone willing to climb to the Top of a tower in Paris could see exactly the same view. so viewers were checking to see if the artists got the details right.

And of course, finding that, yes, every last detail was right, they were astonished and impressed. ironically, the word panorama has lasted longer than most examples of the art form itself. the owners of the buildings where panorama as were displayed charged admission. And they could make a lot of money, but only if audiences kept coming back. so they were forced to change the paintings every year or two, which meant that a lot of panorama as were painted over, or they were cut up and sold so that new ones could go up in their place. so when their popularity waned in the second half of the 19th century, when illustrated newspapers and photography began to satisfy people’s desire for realistic images, there weren’t a lot of panorama is left to preserve.

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