Taking It All In: The Art Of Panoramic Views

From Our Files

March 30, 2018

Depicting landscapes has been around ever since humans first put pencil to paper and brush to canvas. For some artists, however, executing a landscape while sitting in that landscape just wasn't good enough, hence the panoramic view.
Accurately rendering a panoramic view has, apparently, long challenged obsessed and inspired artists. The trend seems to have sprung up in the 17th century, with works that served both as slightly more helpful, more detailed maps with various public or important buildings marked, but also as advertisements for towns and cities. Matthaeus Merian, a Swiss engraver who spent most of his career in Frankfurt, where he also ran a publishing house passed to him by his father-in-law, found raging success with the publication of a 21-volume work, “Topographia Germaniae,” which leaned heavily on his uniquely drawn map views, a work so popular it was reprinted numerous times.
Throughout the late 18th and early 19th century, these works continued, often done in America by travelers, so they began to lose their "Chamber of Commerce" feel in some cases. By the latter half of the 19th century, commissioned paintings of panoramic views versus the earlier print versions were finding favor among the wealthy benefactors of communities, often conveying a sense of "Look what I have built" or "I am ruler of all I survey." Itinerant artists like Ferdinand Brader (1833-1901) and Henry Dousa (1820 to after 1892) found success accepting commissions for panoramic "portraits" of farms from an elevated (or bird's-eye) perspective. Such individualized works may well have grown out of the late-19th-century trend of county atlas publishers including house, farm, and business portraits (for a fee paid by the owners, of course).
Shortly after the dawn of photography, photographers began to experiment with panoramic views as well, with some very early glass stereoview images from high points in European cities like Paris. Throughout the last half of the 19th century and into the first half of the 20th, photographers continued to experiment with various techniques for producing panoramas, initially by seaming individual photographs together and later by working with cameras set on a clockwork mechanism that allowed a photograph, pan, photograph, pan progression (which made it possible for the occasional trickster to dart from one end of a group photograph behind the group to the other end, thus appearing in the same photograph twice).
Clearly, the idea of panoramas continue to fascinate us, and the technology continues to evolve, as an iPhone app that allows panoramic photographs was a significant enough feature to warrant space as a selling feature in ad campaigns. Clearly we all just keep trying to do justice to the world we see around us!

Andrew Richmond holds degrees from Kenyon College and the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture. He has spent more than a decade in the world of antiques and fine art auctions.
Richmond is the owner of Wipiak Consulting and Appraisals in Ohio. He is a recognized expert in the antiques and art field, serving as a regular appraiser on WKET TV’s “Kentucky Collectibles,” and he has conducted numerous appraisal events around Ohio and beyond.
Richmond regularly engages in academic research on American decorative arts and has lectured widely, including venues such as Colonial Williamsburg’s Antiques Forum and the Winterthur Museum’s Furniture Forum. He has published numerous articles and has curated two landmark exhibitions on the decorative arts of his native Ohio. He serves on the boards of several museums and decorative arts organizations.
Andrew lives in rural Ohio with his wife (and regular writing partner), Hollie Davis, their two children, and their cats. 
Andrew Richmond

Andrew Richmond

Andrew Richmond holds degrees from Kenyon College, and the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture. He has spent more than a decade in the world of antiques and fine art auctions.

Andrew is the owner of Wipiak Consulting & Appraisals in Ohio. He is a recognized expert in the antiques and art field, serving as a regular appraiser on WKET TV’s Kentucky Collectibles, and he’s conducted numerous appraisal events around Ohio and beyond.

Andrew regularly engages in academic research on American decorative arts, and has lectured widely, including venues as Colonial Williamsburg’s Antiques Forum and the Winterthur Museum’s Furniture Forum. He has published numerous articles, and has curated two landmark exhibitions on the decorative arts of his native Ohio. He serves on the boards of several museums and decorative arts organizations.

 Andrew lives in rural Ohio with his wife (and regular writing partner) Hollie Davis, their two children, and their cats.

 

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