Panoramic painting

Panoramic paintings are massive artworks that reveal a wide, all-encompassing view of a particular subject, often a landscape, military battle, or historical event. They became especially popular in the 19th century in Europe and the United States, inciting opposition from some writers of Romantic poetry. A few have survived into the 21st century and are on public display.

The panoramas were in the following form: the viewer was invited to enter the rotunda through a tunnel plunged into darkness. He then debouched in the middle of a circular painting of which he could neither see the top, hidden by a screen, nor the bottom, because of a railing that kept him at a distance from the painting. The light source was likewise masked by the screen. The canvas, about 7 meters high and covering circular walls 17 to 50 meters in diameter, was exhibited most often during exhibitions and circulated from one city to another, or even from one country to another.

In China, panoramic paintings are an important subset of handscroll paintings, with some famous examples being Along the River During the Qingming Festival and Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangtze River.

History:

The word "panorama", from Greek pan ("all") horama ("view") was coined by the Irish painter Robert Barker in 1792 to describe his paintings of Edinburgh, Scotland shown on a cylindrical surface, which he soon was exhibiting in London, as "The Panorama".

In 1793 Barker moved his panoramas to the first purpose-built brick panorama rotunda building in the world, in Leicester Square, and made a fortune.

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 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 metres. In contrast, the actual panorama spanned 250 square metres.

Despite the success of Barker's first panorama in Leicester Square, it was neither his first attempt at the craft nor his first exhibition. In 1788 Barker showcased his first panorama. It was only a semi-circular view of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Barker's inability to bring the image to a full 360 degrees disappointed him. To realize his true vision, Barker and his son, Henry Aston Barker, took on the task of painting a scene of the Albion Mills. The first version of what was to be Barker's first successful panorama was displayed in a purpose-built wooden rotunda in the back garden of the Barker home and measured only 137 square metres.

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 from Bankside, etched on several contiguous sheets. When Barker first patented his technique in 1787, he had given 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.

Barker made many efforts to increase the realism of his scenes. To fully immerse the audience in the scene, all borders of the canvas were concealed. Props were also strategically positioned on the platform where the audience stood and two windows were laid into the roof to allow natural light to flood the canvases.

Two scenes could be exhibited in the rotunda simultaneously, however the rotunda at Leicester Square was the only one to do so. Houses with single scenes proved more popular to audiences as the fame of the panorama spread. Because the Leicester Square rotunda housed two panoramas, Barker needed a mechanism to clear the minds of the audience as they moved from one panorama to the other. To accomplish this, patrons walked down a dark corridor and up a long flight of stairs where their minds were supposed to be refreshed for viewing the new scene. Due to the immense size of the panorama, patrons were given orientation plans to help them navigate the scene. These glorified maps pinpointed key buildings, sites, or events exhibited on the canvas.

To create a panorama, artists travelled to the sites and sketched the scenes multiple times. Typically a team of artists worked on one project with each team specializing in a certain aspect of the painting such as landscapes, people or skies. After completing their sketches, the artists typically consulted other paintings, of average size, to add further detail. Martin Meisel described the panorama perfectly in his book Realizations: "In its impact, the Panorama was a comprehensive form, the representation not of the segment of a world, but of a world entire seen from a focal height." Though the artists painstakingly documented every detail of a scene, by doing so they created a world complete in and of itself.

The first panoramas depicted urban settings, such as cities, while later panoramas depicted nature and famous military battles. The necessity for military scenes increased in part because so many were taking place. French battles commonly found their way to rotundas thanks to the feisty leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte. Henry Aston Barker's travels to France during the Peace of Amiens led him to court, where Bonaparte accepted him. Henry Aston created panoramas of Bonaparte's battles including The Battle of Waterloo, which saw so much success that he retired after finishing it. Henry Aston's relationship with Bonaparte continued following Bonaparte's exile to Elba, where Henry Aston visited the former emperor. Pierre Prévost (painter) (1764–1823) was the first important French panorama painter. Among his 17 panoramas, the most famous describe the cities of Rome, Naples, Amsterdam, Jerusalem, Athens and also the battle of Wagram.

Outside of England and France, the popularity of panoramas depended on the type of scene displayed. Typically, people wanted to see images from their own countries or from England. This principle rang true in Switzerland, where views of the Alps dominated. Likewise in America, New York City panoramas found popularity, as well as imports from Barker's rotunda. As painter John Vanderlyn soon found out, French politics did not interest Americans. In particular, his depiction of Louis XVIII's return to the throne did not live two months in the rotunda before a new panorama took its place.

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. Most major European cities featured more than one purpose-built structure hosting panoramas. These large fixed-circle panoramas declined in popularity in the latter third of the nineteenth century, though in the United States they experienced a partial revival; in this period, they were more commonly referred to as cycloramas.

The panorama competed for audiences most frequently with the diorama, a slightly curved or flat canvas extending 22 by 14 metres. The diorama was invented in 1822 by Louis Daguerre and Charles-Marie Bouton, the latter a former student of the renowned French painter Jacques-Louis David.

Unlike the panorama where spectators had to move to view the scene, the scenes on the diorama moved so the audience could remain seated. Accomplished with four screens on a roundabout, the illusion captivated 350 spectators at a time for a period of 15 minutes. The images rotated in a 73 degree arc, focusing on two of the four scenes while the remaining two were prepared, which allowed the canvases to be refreshed throughout the course of the show. While topographical detail was crucial to panoramas, as evidenced by the teams of artists who worked on them, the effect of the illusion took precedence with the diorama. Painters of the diorama also added their own twist to the panorama's props, but instead of props to make the scenes more real, they incorporated sounds. Another similarity to the panorama was the effect the diorama had on its audience. Some patrons experienced a stupor, while others were alienated by the spectacle. The alienation of the diorama was caused by the connection the scene drew to art, nature and death. After Daguerre and Bouton's first exhibition in London, one reviewer noted a stillness like that "of the grave." To remedy this tomblike atmosphere Daguerre painted both sides of the canvas, known as "the double effect." By lighting both painted sides of the canvas, light was transmitted and reflected producing a type of transparency producing the effect of time passing. This effect gave the crew operating the lights and turning the roundabout a new type of control over the audience than the panorama ever had.

In Britain and particularly in the US, the panoramic ideal was intensified by unrolling a canvas-backed scroll past the viewer in a Moving Panorama, an alteration of an idea that was familiar in the hand-held landscape scrolls of Song dynasty. First unveiled in 1809 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the moving panorama required a large canvas and two vertical rollers to be set up on a stage. Peter Marshall added the twist to Barker's original creation, which saw success throughout the 19th and into the 20th century. The scene or variation of scenes passed between the rollers, eliminating the need to showcase and view the panorama in a rotunda. A precursor to "moving" pictures, the moving panorama incorporated music, sound effects and stand-alone cut-outs to create their mobile effect. Such a traveling motion allowed for new types of scenes, such as chase sequences, that could not be produced so well in either the diorama or the panorama. In contrast specifically to the diorama, where the audience seemed to be physically rotated, the moving panorama gave patrons a new perspective, allowing them to "[function] as a moving eye".

The origin of the panoramic concept

As a panorama was originally an equal geographical representation next map, relief and profile (which is now almost exclusively used as a geological profile) referred. It got a great influence on the land surveying, because both methods of height measurement, as the Landesaufnahme (the measuring table method) were developed from it. There were panorama representations in two basic forms:

As long picture strips, which put together at the ends either a 360 ° all-round view (cylindrical Rundrundpanorama) or a longer section of it reproduced or the view to a side of a route or a riverside, sometimes also a seashore.

Rarer is the top view of a terrain, as with a fisheye lens (wide angle 180 °) recorded, sometimes referred to as circular ring panorama. In the middle of the viewpoint and on the edge of the horizon line can be seen. For a closer look, the sheet is rotated around the center. This form was used almost exclusively for tourism or educational purposes.

The greatest importance for scientific purposes had panoramas from the late 18th century to the mid-19th century. The first scientific mountain panorama was drawn by Jacques-Barthélemy Micheli du Crest from Geneva in 1754. It was printed under the title Prospect géometrique des montagnes neigées dites glacier, telles qu'on les découvre en tems favorable depuis le château d 'arbourg dans les territoires des Grisons, you Canton of Ury and the Highlands of the Canton of Berne with Tobias Conrad Lotter in Augsburg 1755. But there were already many panoramic representations going back to the 15th and especially in the 16th century. However, these have not yet been created on an exact geometrical basis. Perhaps the topographer Anton van den Wyngaerde (1525-1571) from Amsterdam has already 1548/49 under the title Zelandia Descriptio made a cylindrical all-round panorama.

Also noteworthy are the long stripe-shaped coastal views produced on voyages of discovery, e.g. by William Westall (1781-1850) from the book of books on the travel book Matthew Flinders'. Panoramic views have become popular since the mid-19th century, especially as illustrations in guidebooks, e.g. Switzerland.

The panorama as art

Robert Barker's patented staging of the cylindrical large-format surfaces through railings reminiscent of viewing platforms and natural objects occupying the foreground made them into profitable and popular art entertainment since 1792. In the degree of her imitation of reality, she went beyond the simple wide-format but two-dimensional panoramic image.

The marketing of the patent in the metropolises by Barker and his imitators has led to exaggerated valuations: Stephan Oettermann defines the panorama in his monograph of the same name as: "machine in which the rule of the bourgeois view is learned and at the same time glorified, as an instrument of liberation and to reincarnate the gaze, as the first optical mass medium in the strict sense. " Albrecht Koschorke describes the panorama as a "skimmed picture", that is, as the forerunner of panoramic apperception, and Walter Benjamin speaks of "aquariums of the distant and past".

Illusion generation

The panorama of the 19th century often consisted of several walkable levels, from which the visitor could, for example, look from an elevated position to a 360 ° monumental image. The most common motifs were city or landscape views made using a camera obscura. Combination forms with a projection using the lantern magica were also common.

Generation or technology

A large circular building (rotunda) will be entered after paying the entrance fee through the entrance. Through the darkened corridor, in which the eyes get accustomed to the twilight inside, the visitor reaches the viewer's platform via a staircase. Above her, a shield-like sail stretches, which has the function of removing the upper edge of the surrounding framed frameless picture with a landscape view of 360 ° as well as the ring-shaped roof skylights in the roof of the view of the beholder. Daylight falls on the painting, is reflected from there and illuminates the room evenly. The lower edge of the circular painting is obscured by either the projecting platform itself or the faux terrain running between the platform and the screen, which conceal the transition from three-dimensional space into two-dimensional image with real, plastic objects.

While the viewer's gaze can glide freely over the surrounding 1,000 to 2,000 square meter screen, a barrier prevents the vertical viewing angle from exceeding its size. Nowhere can the gaze wander over the painting to compare the picture painted in "proto-photographic" realism with reality. In addition, since all the light seems to emanate from the painting itself, after a few minutes the visitor has the perfect and astonishing illusion that he has actually been "moved by magic" to the place shown.

Involvement of the viewer

By designing the visitor platform in a style that suits the theme of the picture (for example, as a balloon gondola or as a ship's deck), the visitor was given the feeling that he himself was at the scene.

Perspective

In the place of the central perspective, which was binding for the peep-box images, the Panorama created a "democratic" countless eye points and, with them, viewer perspectives implied a polyperspective.

The central perspective construction is based on a rigid eye and constructs the image towards it by gathering the lines of flight in the eye point. For viewing such a picture, this means that only one viewer at a time can look at the picture from the opposite standpoint. Images constructed in a central perspective are exclusive images insofar as they allow only one person for viewing.

In the panorama, on the other hand, all observer points of view coincide with the horizon; the circular form results in an infinite number of focal points of observation and thus (theoretically) an infinite number of observers who can look at the picture undistorted.

panorama size

The first panoramas were relatively small. This quickly caused the visitor to feel dizzy, as he felt he walked several miles with each step. The problem was resolved by increasing the image diameter from about 10 meters to about 30 meters in the 1830s.

Faux terrain

Initially, to conceal the lower edge of the painting, cloths were stretched between the platform and the canvas. In the 1820s, people began to make the foreground plastic, in line with the depiction. At the same time, the representation of the foremost image plane was transposed into a relief, and from then on it continued under the platform in a fully plastic manner, so that the physical and spatial values ​​of painting optically merged with the real ones. The decisive factor was that no clear distinction could be made between painted and real image objects.

Visitors

Goal of the panorama

It was supposed to get rid of obstacles in order to allow a cool, distanced view of things that is not obscured by any subjectivity, that is not restricted to the limits of the physical. A look as the objective sciences of the time claimed him. The viewer should be given the most immediate, comprehensive and deceptively genuine impression of specific locations or events. The visitor should be able to let his gaze wander as if he were in the open air and at the actual place of action.

The pleasure of seeing should be complemented educationally by its geographical, scientific or ethnological themes. The value of a panorama as an educational entity depended directly on the true-to-life drawing. For this purpose, the painters had to prove the authenticity of their image.

Purpose of the panoramas visit

The urbanization promoted the curiosity of the citizen on the places and events of the wide world. It was a journey through the eyes to unknown locations outside of one's own everyday life. It pretended to be "as if in a dream", more convenient and faster than any other means of travel. The interest was related to the onset of tourism. People who had actually seen the places could now expertly compare their memories with the picture, and people planning a trip could anticipate what they were expecting in advance and critically review those impressions.

image issues

In the Panorama, one moved away from mythological and allegorical representations, which were understandable only to the educated observer, to realistic landscape depictions. Away from the depiction of religious-historical events that illustrated the biblical story, to the presentation of actual real political events that interested the newspaper reader.

In a first phase of the panoramas, there were mainly landscape paintings of foreign and known places to admire. In a second phase, historical events took center stage. The picture selection was difficult. It should have happened not too long ago. At first, battle images of the recent past were up to date. Later, they showed older to ancient battles.

information brochures

Information brochures were orientation plans with an outline drawing that numbered interesting points and provided explanations. Over time, the souvenir programs developed from small brochures, then strong notebooks, last small books of 60 to 80 pages with explanatory text. Very rarely, however, are the panoramas themselves, the circumstances of their creation, their dimensions, etc. described in these brochures. The texts are limited to the detailed geographical description of the sitter, their history and peculiarities. So no explanation of the sitter, but only additional information.

Panorama as art

mass Art

Nobody ever asked who painted the picture or whether the pictures had been painted by anyone. The audience consisted mostly of less educated people, who had few other opportunities to see or judge the quality of original oil paintings. The panorama should simply be pleasing, amusing, surprising, astonishing, educating, entertaining, and finally making a profit for its owner. The illusion of the baffling reality was paramount; "High" art of a major artist would only have disturbed.

mass medium

The panorama was called the first mass medium in the strict sense. Unlike previous collections, it could be viewed by anyone. The images were understandable by their realism for everyone. The size of the image and the complicated manufacturing process required a division of labor production. The immense costs forbade a private purchase and thus elitist art enjoyment - the medium had to be financed by mass sale of tickets.

Artistic aspect

The choice of the observer's point of view was very important, because things could not simply be added or omitted (through artistic freedom) - after all, the panorama should be absolutely true to reality. This choice was the artist's only free choice, who otherwise had to reproduce everything only 1 to 1.

The precision and truthfulness went so far that before drawing extensive research work was done, yes to present everything correctly (for example, in historical events). But not only the tangible objects should be displayed accurately in a panorama, but also the exact time of the event presented. Exact study of the natural light conditions was inevitable.

Three high blossoms

In the 1830s, the public lost interest in the panorama as the need for visual information was more and more satisfied by the rapidly evolving photography and illustrated newspapers. It was not until the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 that the panorama blossomed. The battles offered new material and promoted patriotism. The financing form of the joint stock companies was found. The rotundas were standardized. Within a short period of time, new rotundas were built on behalf of stock corporations in almost every major city in Europe and America. Only at the beginning of the 20th century were panoramas replaced by newer forms of media and changed entertainment habits. From the 1970s on, first in the communist sphere of influence, a renaissance of the panoramic phenomenon began. Since then, panoramas have been created almost every year worldwide.

distribution

Single funding

In Barker's time, it was still the artists themselves who were responsible for opening hours, advertising and tickets in addition to producing the panorama. That's why the entire family was often involved in the company in the beginning to make the enormous amount of work and keep it cost-effective. Most of the panoramas had to be exhibited in larger halls, since the high investment costs of a rotunda building could only be applied by a few artists.

companies

The stock companies of the second panoramas phase were able to raise the necessary immense capital easily. They wooed investors with significant earnings promises, which, however, could only rarely be met. Most of them went bankrupt sooner or later.

standardization

The joint-stock companies provided for an international exploitation of the images by having standardized rotundas built in which the scrolls could circulate. In practice, however, there was the problem that there was hardly a pictorial theme that was on the one hand "neutral" enough not to offend the national feeling in any of the potential exhibiting countries, but on the other so interesting that it attracted enough publicity everywhere.

Teamwork

In the second panoramic phase, the panoramas had to be produced within months. A hint of artistic individuality; young painters, who were not very ambitious, were hired. The individual panoramen painters then specialized in architecture, landscape or decorative paintings. The bringing together of the individual specialists was the responsibility of the responsible painter. The painters were a whole range of craftsmen and assistants at hand, the colors mixed, scaffolding pushed etc ...

Similarities between panorama, photography and film

The panorama was to a certain extent the forerunner of early cinema, insofar as it enabled the immediate participation in unknown places and historical events. As the panoramas wanted to depict the depicted nature in a deceptively real way, they point to photography, and the moving panorama variants to the film. The organizational and financing structures were the same as those of the cinema.

Romantic criticism of panoramas

The panorama's rise in popularity was a result of its accessibility in that people did not need a certain level of education to enjoy the views it offered. Accordingly, patrons from across the social scale flocked to rotundas throughout Europe.

While easy access was an attraction of the panorama, some people believed it was nothing more than a parlor trick bent on deceiving its public audience. Designed to have a lingering effect upon the viewer, the panorama was placed in the same category as propaganda of the period, which was also seen as deceitful. The locality paradox also attributed to the arguments of panorama critics. A phenomenon resulting from immersion in a panorama, the locality paradox happened when people were unable to distinguish where they were: in the rotunda or at the scene they were seeing.

Writers feared the panorama for the simplicity of its illusion. Hester Piozzi was among those who rebelled against the growing popularity of the panorama for precisely this reason. She did not like seeing so many people – elite and otherwise – fooled by something so simple.

Another problem with the panorama was what it came to be associated with, namely, by redefining the sublime to incorporate the material. In their earliest forms, panoramas depicted topographical scenes and in so doing, made the sublime accessible to every person with 3 shillings in his or her pocket. The sublime became an everyday thing and therefore, a material commodity. By associating the sublime with the material, the panorama was seen as a threat to romanticism, which was obsessed with the sublime. According to the romantics, the sublime was never supposed to include materiality and by linking the two, panoramas tainted the sublime.

The poet William Wordsworth has long been characterized as an opponent of the panorama, most notably for his allusion to it in Book Seven of The Prelude. It has been argued that Wordsworth's problem with the panorama was the deceit it used to gain popularity. He felt, critics say, that the panorama not only exhibited an immense scene of some kind, but also the weakness of human intelligence. Wordsworth was offended by the fact that so many people found panoramas irresistible and concluded that people were not smart enough to see through the charade. Because of his argument in "The Prelude," it is safe to assume Wordsworth saw a panorama at some point during his life, but it is unknown which one he saw; there is no substantial proof he ever went, other than his description in the poem.

However, Wordsworth's hatred of the panorama was not limited to its deceit. The panorama's association with the sublime was likewise offensive to the poet as were other spectacles of the period that competed with reality. As a poet, Wordsworth sought to separate his craft from the phantasmagoria enveloping the population. In this context, phantasmagoria refers to signs and other circulated propaganda, including billboards, illustrated newspapers and panoramas themselves. Wordsworth's biggest problem with panoramas was their pretense: the panorama lulled spectators into stupors, inhibiting their ability to imagine things for themselves. Wordsworth wanted people to see the representation depicted in the panorama and appreciate it for what it was – art.

Conversely, some critics argue Wordsworth was not opposed to the panorama, but was rather hesitant about it. A main argument is that other episodes in The Prelude have just as much sensory depth as panoramas had. Such depth could only be accomplished through imitation of the human senses, something both the panorama and The Prelude succeed at. Therefore, since both the panorama and The Prelude imitate the senses, they are equal and suggest Wordsworth was not entirely opposed to panoramas.

A modern take on the panorama believes the enormous paintings filled a hole in the lives of those who lived during the nineteenth century. Bernard Comment said in his book The Painted Panorama, that the masses needed "absolute dominance" and the illusion offered by the panorama gave them a sense of organization and control. Despite the power it wielded, the panorama detached audiences from the scene they viewed, replacing reality and encouraging them to watch the world rather than experience it.

Surviving panoramas

Relatively few of these unwieldy ephemera survive. The oldest known surviving panorama (completed in 1814 by Marquard Wocher) is on display at Schadau Castle, depicting an average morning in the Swiss town of Thun. As of today it is owned by the Gottfried Keller Foundation. Another rare surviving great-circle panorama is the Panorama Mesdag, completed in 1881 and housed in a purpose-built museum in The Hague, showing the dunes of nearby Scheveningen. Both of these works are considered of interest as they depict domestic scenes of their times. Depictions of warfare were more common as subject matter, an example of which is located at the battlefield of Waterloo, depicting the battle.

An exhibition "Panoramania" was held at the Barbican in the 1980s, with a catalog by Ralph Hyde. The Racławice Panorama, currently located in Wrocław, Poland, is a monumental (15 × 120 metre) panoramic painting depicting the Battle of Racławice, during the Kościuszko Uprising. A panorama of the Battle of Stalingrad is on display at Mamayev Kurgan. Among Franz Roubaud's great panoramas, those depicting the Siege of Sevastopol (1905) and Battle of Borodino (1911) survive, although the former was damaged during the Siege of Sevastopol (1942) and the latter was transferred to Poklonnaya Gora. The Pleven Panorama in Pleven, Bulgaria, depicts the events of the Siege of Plevna in 1877 on a 115×15-metre canvas with a 12-meter foreground.

Five large panoramas survive in North America: the Cyclorama of Jerusalem (a.k.a. the Panorama of Jerusalem at the Moment of Christ's Death) at St. Anne, outside of Quebec City; the Gettysburg Cyclorama depicting Pickett's Charge during the Battle of Gettysburg in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; John Vanderlyn's Panorama of the Garden and Palace of Versailles at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City] and the Atlanta Cyclorama, which depicts the Battle of Atlanta, in Atlanta, Georgia. A fifth panorama, also depicting the Battle of Gettysburg, was willed in 1996 to Wake Forest University in North Carolina; it is in poor condition and not on public display. It was purchased in 2007 by a group of North Carolina investors who hope to resell it to someone willing to restore it. Only pieces survive of a massive cyclorama depicting the Battle of Shiloh.

In the area of the moving panorama, there are somewhat more extant, though many are in poor repair and the conservation of such enormous paintings poses very expensive problems. The most notable rediscovered panorama in the United States was the Great Moving Panorama of Pilgrim's Progress, which was found in storage at the York Institute now the Saco Museum in Saco, Maine, by its former curator Tom Hardiman. It was found to incorporate designs by many of the leading painters of its day, including Jasper Francis Cropsey, Frederic Edwin Church, and Henry Courtney Selous (Selous was the in-house painter for the original Barker panorama in London for many years.)

The St. Louis Art Museum owns another moving panorama, which it is conserving in public during the summers of 2011 and 2012. "The Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley" — the only remaining of six known Mississippi River panorama paintings—measures 2.3 metres (90 inches) wide by 106 metres (348 feet) long and was commissioned c. 1850 by an eccentric amateur archaeologist named Montroville W. Dickeson. Judith H. Dobrzynski wrote about the restoration in an article in the Wall Street Journal dated June 27, 2012.

In 1918, the New Bedford Whaling Museum acquired the Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage Round the World, created by artists Benjamin Russell and Caleb Purrington in 1848. At about 395 m (1,295 ft) long and 2.6 m (8 1⁄2 ft) high, it is one of the largest surviving moving panoramas (although far short of the "Three Miles [4800 m] of Canvass" advertised by its creators in their handbills). The Museum is currently planning for the conservation of the Grand Panorama. Although in storage, highlights may be seen on the Museum's Flickr pages

Another moving panorama was donated to the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection at Brown University Library in 2005. Painted in Nottingham, England around 1860 by John James Story (d. 1900), it depicts the life and career of the great Italian patriot, Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882). The panorama stands about 1.4 m (4 1⁄2 ft) high and 83 m (273 ft) long, painted on both sides in watercolor. Numerous battles and other dramatic events in his life are depicted in 42 scenes, and the original narration written in ink survives.

The Arrival of the Hungarians, a vast cyclorama by Árpád Feszty et al., completed in 1894, is displayed at the Ópusztaszer National Heritage Park in Hungary. It was made to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of the 895 conquest of the Carpathian Basin by the Hungarians.

The Cyclorama of Early Melbourne, by artist John Hennings in 1892, still survives albeit having suffered water damage during a fire. Painted from a panoramic sketch of Early Melbourne in 1842 by Samuel Jackson. It places the viewer on top of the partially constructed Scott's Church on Collins Street in the Melbourne CBD. Commissioned to celebrate 50 years of the city of Melbourne, it was displayed in the Melbourne Exhibition Building for nearly 30 years before being taken into storage. Relatively small for a Cyclorama, it measured 36 m (118 ft) long and 4 m (13 ft) high.

The Biological museum (Stockholm), founded by hunter and taxidermist Gustaf Kolthoff, opened its dioramas to the public in November 1893 and is still an active museum with about 15000 visitors yearly. The museum has panorama paintings by Bruno Liljefors (assisted by Gustaf Fjæstad), Kjell Kolthoff and several hundred preserved animals in their natural habitats.