Scheveningen village, a small section of the Panorama Mesdag (1880-1881), with fake terrain in the foreground.

Panoramic paintings reveal a wide, all-encompassing view. The word "panorama", from Greek pan ("all") horama ("view") was coined by the Scottish painter Robert Barker in 1792 to describe his paintings of Edinburgh shown on a cylindrical surface, which he soon was exhibiting in London, as "The Panorama". From 1793 Barker moved his panoramas to the first purpose-built panorama building in the world, in Leicester Square and made a fortune. Image File history File links H.W. Mesdag (1831-1915): Panorama Mesdag (1880-1881), detail. ... Image File history File links H.W. Mesdag (1831-1915): Panorama Mesdag (1880-1881), detail. ... Scheveningen pier Scheveningen is part of Den Haag, the Netherlands. ... Scheveningen village, a small section of the Panorama Mesdag, with fake terrain in the foreground. ... This article should be split into multiple articles accessible from a disambiguation page. ... In its most general sense, a panorama is any wide view of a physical space. ... George Barker was a painter. ... Leicester Square (pronounced Lester Square) is a pedestrianised square in the West End of London, United Kingdom. ...

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" (an adjective that didn't appear in print until 1813). The extended meaning of a "comprehensive survey" of a subject followed sooner, in 1801. Visitors to Barker's semi-circular 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 meters.

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, etched on several contiguous sheets. When Barker first patented his technique in 1787 he had gaven it a French title: La Nature à Coup d’ Oeil ("Nature at a glance"). 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. Table of Perspective, 1728 Cyclopaedia Figure 1, with rays of light travelling from the viewers eye, through the picture plane, and to the object, is the basis for graphical perspective. ... Wenzel (or Wenceslaus) Hollar (Vaclav Holar) (July 13, 1607 - March 28, 1677), Bohemian etcher, was born at Prague, and died in London, being buried at St Margarets church, Westminster. ... Though the concept of the sublime had roots in the connoisseurship of Antiquity, the picturesque was a new category in the incipient Romantic sensibility of the 18th century. ... The panorama across Eskdale from Ill Crag. ...

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. In the US, the experience was intensified by unrolling a canvas-backed scroll past the viewer in a cyclorama (noted in the 1840s), an inflation of an idea that was familiar in the hand-held landscape scrolls of Song China Panoramas were only eclipsed by the moving pictures. (See motion picture.) The similar diorama, essentially an elaborate scene in an artificially-lit room-sized box, shown in Paris and taken to London in 1823, is credited to the inventive Louis Daguerre, who had trained with a painter of panoramas. Franz Alekseevitch Roubaud was a Russian painter. ... A cyclorama is a cylindrical painting designed to provide a viewer, standing in the middle of the cylinder, with a 360° view of the painting. ... Alternative meaning: Song Dynasty (420-479) The Song dynasty (Chinese: 宋朝) was a ruling dynasty in China from 960-1279. ... For other uses see film (disambiguation) Film refers to the celluliod media on which movies are printed Film — also called movies, the cinema, the silver screen, moving pictures, photoplays, picture shows, flicks, or motion pictures, — is a field that encompasses motion pictures as an art form or as part of... A diorama is a partially three dimensional model of a landscape typically showing historical events, nature scenes, cityscapes, etc. ... Louis Daguerre Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (November 18, 1787 – July 10, 1851) was the French artist and chemist who is recognized for his invention of the Daguerreotype process of photography. ...

Few of these unwieldy ephemera survive; a rare surviving painted panorama is the Panorama Mesdag in a purpose-built museum in The Hague, showing the dunes of nearby Scheveningen. An exhibition "Panoramania" was held at the Barbican in the 1980s. Scheveningen village, a small section of the Panorama Mesdag, with fake terrain in the foreground. ... Arms of The Hague Flag of The city of The Hague. ... Scheveningen pier Scheveningen is part of Den Haag, the Netherlands. ... Barbican (from mediæval Latin barbecana) - a fortified outpost or gateway, such as an outer defence to a city or castle and any tower situated over a gate or bridge which was used for defence purposes. ...

See also

• Pleven Panorama
• The Racławice Panorama
• Myriorama

Raevsky Battery at Borodino, a fragment of Roubaud's panoramic painting.

Pleven Panorama Pleven Epopee 1877, more commonly known as Pleven Panorama, is a panorama located in Pleven, Bulgaria, depicting the events of the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-78, specifically the five-month Siege of Pleven (Pleven Epopee) which made the city internationally famous and which contributed to the Liberation... The building of Panorama Racławicka The Racławice Panorama (Polish: Panorama Racławicka) is a large (Size: 15 × 120 metres) panorama painting which shows the Battle of Racławice during the Kościuszko Uprising. ... Myriorama cards - 19th century - these came from a set of 18 Myriorama originally meant a set of illustrated cards which 19th century children could arrange and re-arrange, forming different pictures. ... Image File history File links Raevsky_battery. ... Image File history File links Raevsky_battery. ... Portrait by George Dawe in the Military Gallery Nikolay Nikolaevich Rayevsky (Russian: ) (14 September 1771 – 16 September 1829) was a Russian general and statesman who achieved fame for his feats of arms during the Napoleonic wars. ... Franz Alekseevitch Roubaud was a Russian painter. ...

External links

• Online Etymology Dictionary: Panorama
• Michael Quinion, "World Wide Words"; Panorama
• "The 'Panorama'": Edinburgh's panorama
• Panorama of London from Albion Mills: a semi-circular view in hand watercolored prints
• Museum of London website Panoramania!

References

• Ralph Hyde, Panoramania, 1988 (exhibition catalog)
• Oettermann, The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium (MIT Press)