The American Panorama Company painted the Battle of Atlanta. It opened in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and closed in 1887. In 1893, George V. Gress purchased the attraction and it has remained in Atlanta ever since. In 1919, an amendment to the Atlanta city charter approved the construction of a building to house the massive artwork that was reported as weighing 9,000 ponds. The structure was designed by architect John Francis Downing and dedicated on October 1, 1921.
In 1936, a three-dimensional foreground was added to the painting in Atlanta. A mannequin of Clark Gable from the movie “Gone with the Wind” was also included by 1939. In 1979 the painting underwent conservation, reopening to the public in 1982.
This particular cyclorama is near and dear to me. In 2002, I traveled to Atlanta to assess the condition of the Scottish Rite scenery collection.
While I was in town, I visited the Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama with Larry Hill. Hill was one of the theatre professors who accompanied Lance Brockman and Rhett Bryson on many adventures as they crossed the country to document Masonic scenery. The three paved the pathway for my own research and restoration projects. When Larry and I visited the cyclorama we went behind the scene and was slightly astounded at how it had been repaired and conserved. I remember thinking at the time, “Well, interesting choice; hope it never has to move.” It has since moved, the website lists the exhibit as “permanently closed,” but is supposedly undergoing conservation. Here are two tales for your perusal: http://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/explore/destinations/atlanta-cyclorama and http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/08/us/atlanta-cyclorama-big-painting-move-trnd/index.html
The Battle of Atlanta was described in detail in the “Bad Lands Cow Boy” (Medora, North Dakota, July 22, 1886, page 3) reporting, “The magnificent panorama of one of the bitterest fights of the Civil War “ was on exhibition in Minneapolis. A great circular building had been erected for the panorama.
The article continued, “The word panorama conveys to the mind of one who has not seen one of these great pictures, but a faint idea of the effect secured by a combination of art and nature. The common idea of the effect secured by a combination of art and nature. The common idea of a panorama is that of a series of moving scenes. The modern war panorama differs radically from this commonly accepted idea. Instead of a series of views the spectator is translated by an ingenious device to a point of observation which enables him to command the entire field and wide expanse of country. The huge painting is hung around the walls of the great circular building, and the spectator is practically placed in the very center of a great landscape stretching away in “Atlanta” to from fifteen to twenty miles in every direction. No description which can be given of one of these wars paintings can convey to the initiated mind any idea of their effect. Ingenious as is the idea it is not one of American origin. The first of these panoramas was painted in Europe as long ago as 1810, and now in every European city of importance some famous battle scene is depicted in one of these war pictures.”
The author of the article explains that there was an interest in depicting battles of the Civil War, especially after Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s book and a series of stories from officers published in Century Magazine. Interestingly, a signed copy of his book is in the Minnesota Masonic Heritage Center Library. I inventoried it as the Curatorial Director after moving the 10,000 piece acquisition from the St. Paul Scottish Rite during 2015.
Responding to the public enthusiasm in the nineteenth century, William Wehner decided to prepare a panorama with “a series of correct paintings which should have both artistic merit and positive historical value.” Wehner also hired Theodore R. Davis who was a war artist for Harper’s Weekly and possessed a rare collection of sketches of all the principal battles of the Civil War, as well as “a marvelous memory of the events and men.” There were more than twenty thousand figures included in the Battle of Atlanta. Blending in with the two-dimensional composition were also many dimensional items that included trees, mounds of earth, a stream of water, a railroad track, a smoldering campfire, a simmering pot of water, and other physical props.
As the cyclorama building was being completed, the artists were preparing the compositions, and sketching details that would later be transferred to the canvas. The landscape artists were studying the characteristics of the fields to be depicted, while the portrait and figure painters were occupied in “traveling north and south studying the types of faces.” The article reported “A vast collection of weapons and accouterments, all paraphernalia of war was gathered in the studio at Milwaukee before the task of painting was fairly commenced.”
There are many pictures of the cyclorama and I am attaching only a few for a simple sense of history and scale.
To be continued…
Well known military officers from the Civil War in later decades would travel the world in military or government capacities, and eagerly sough- out panoramas in America and in Europe. The officers were very interested in how military strategy was depicted. Newspapers record the insights of the famous officers who visited the panoramas. General Douglas MacArthur visited the BATTLE OF ATLANTA panorama six times–his father was an officer who fought in that battle.