Panoramania issue

[jim.dunn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Jim Dunn)]

>
> I would certainly enjoy seeing a synopsis of the original
> invention though.
> Could you post it?
>
>

In the spirit of encouraging people to try and obtain (i.e. buy) a copy of this
excellent book on the history of all types of panoramic images (not just
photographic), I include a the first two paragraphs from the introduction by
Scott B. Wilcox, remember the book dates from the late 1980's so has nothing
about digital pans.

Please respect the copyright and only use this text for reference.

Jim Dunn
........................................................................


PANORAMANIA by Ralph Hyde (Exhibition Selector, Keeper of Prints, Guildhall
Library)

UNLIMITING THE BOUNDS OF PAINTING (Introduction)
BY SCOTT B. WILCOX (Curator, Yale Center for British Art, USA)


On 14 March 1789, 'MR BARKER'S INTERESTING and NOVEL VIEW of the CITY and CASTLE
of EDINBURGH, and the whole adjacent and surrounding country' opened in London.
The novelty of the view was that it comprised a full 360°. Standing at the
centre of a huge cylinder, the spectator was completely surrounded by the view
painted on the inside of the cylinder. Robert Barker, an Irish-born artist
working in Edinburgh, had devised this form of painting several years earlier.
The picture of the Scottish capital, his first large-scale attempt to put the
idea into practice, had already achieved success in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The view of Edinburgh was the first of a prodigious series of such paintings,
for which Barker two years later coined the name 'panorama'. In 1793 he opened a
permanent establishment for the exhibition of his panoramas in London - an
establishment that continued in operation for seventy years. Other pictorial
entertainment's, either based on Barker's principle, or on other related
schemes, proliferated, early in the nineteenth century to become a considerable
attraction in the English capital. The popularity of the panoramas was
restricted neither to London nor to Britain, but was a truly international
phenomenon. As early as 1795 there was a panorama on exhibition in New York, and
by 1800 they had been seen in Paris and several German cities. Throughout the
nineteenth century the various forms of the circular panorama, the diorama, and
the moving panorama drifted in and out of fashion. In the later years of the
century, when the original circular form enjoyed a dramatic revival, not only
Europe and America but Australia, Brazil, Korea and Japan boasted panorama
rotundas.

Copyright, Barbican Art Gallery, Corporation of the City of London 1988

ISBN 0 86294 125 3



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