The First Panoramas is a cultural history of the first three decades of the panorama, a three-hundred-sixty-degree visual medium patented by the artist Robert Barker in Britain in 1787. A towering two-story architectural construction inside which spectators gazed on a 10,000-square-foot painting, Barker's new technology was designed to create an impression of total verisimilitude for the observer.
In the beautifully illustrated The First Panoramas, Denise Blake Oleksijczuk demonstrates the complexity of the panoramas' history and cultural impact, exploring specific exhibits:...