Wide Angle

The word “panorama” is a neologism taken from the Greek and meaning “all seeing”; it was originally coined in 1792 in a notice in the London Times announcing the appearance of the new spectacle: a 360 degree painting taken from an elevated vantage point and allowing a visual survey that extended from the fore- or middleground to the distant horizon. This circular or stationary panorama was the invention of the Irish-born artist Robert Barker, who first exhibited his work—a picture of Edinburgh—in London in 1789; it made its appearance in France in 1799 and in Germany the following year. Over the next century the panorama and its variants—cosmoramas (“glorified peepshows,” panoramically extended), dioramas, neoramas, cycloramas, and in particular, moving panoramas—came to epitomize an international hunger for physically, geographically, and historically extended vision. ¹ The panoramic [End Page 35] enjoyed a metaphoric reach that satisfied the nineteenth-century craving for visual—and by extension physical and political—control over a rapidly expanding world. In its moving form, the panorama captured not only spatial extension but the passage of time and the grand sweep of history, a history that now needed to be marshalled and organized in accordance with the imperial dreams of the new nation-states of Europe and the United States. ²

Recent scholarly interest in the international vogue for both stationary and moving panoramas has revealed its extent—by one estimate around three hundred giant productions. In the years between 1870 and the appearance of movies, these productions were seen, according to one estimate, by some hundred million people. The 360 degree or stationary panorama enjoyed two phases of popular enthusiasm: from its invention in the 1790s to the 1820s, and again, under the new label of “cyclorama,” in an international revival during the late nineteenth century that forms a direct historical link with the origins of the motion picture, whose coming assured its decline. ³ Admirers of the various forms of panorama ranged from John Ruskin to Walter Benjamin, who witnessed the Kaiserpanorama during his Berlin childhood. ⁴ Attendance at the stationary panorama in France—a mix of workers, diplomats, and professionals—suggests its cross-class appeal. Despite ups and downs through the century, audience numbers experienced an overall growth; between 1800 and 1820, there were an estimated 30,000–50,000 visitors annually; after that date the numbers dropped to around 15,000 a year, although they shot up once again after 1860, reaching a high of 200,000 a year during the panorama revival in the fourth quarter of the century, between 1872 and 1885. ⁵

On the continent, the moving panorama and related forms never enjoyed the popularity of their stationary cousins. Instead, they found a long-lived audience in Britain and the U.S. The first so-called “changing panoramas” appeared in 1800 on the English stage, forming backdrops to theatrical productions. ⁶ By the early 1800s they were appearing as distinct entertainments featuring scenic and exotic...