John Banvard

John Banvard

John Banvard (November 15, 1815 - May 16, 1891) was a U.S. panorama and portrait painter known for his panoramic views of the Mississippi River Valley.

John Banvard was born in New York and was educated in high school. When his father went bankrupt, he began to travel around the United States, and supported himself with paintings he exhibited.

In 1840 he began to paint large panoramas of the whole Mississippi River valley. He traveled through the area in a boat, made preliminary drawings and supported himself with paintings and hunting. He combined the preliminary sketches and transferred them to a canvas in a building erected for this purpose in Louisville, Kentucky. His largest panorama began as 12 feet (3,6 m) high and 1300 feet (369 m) long and was eventually expanded to about half a mile (about 800 meters) although it was advertised as a "three-mile canvas". It toured around the nation, and was eventually cut up in to hundreds of pieces, none of which still exist today.

In 1846 he began to travel with this panorama in Europe, Asia and Africa and even gave Queen Victoria a private viewing. During his travels he also painted panoramas in Palestine and the Nile River Valley.

A fine accounting of Banvard's panoramas can be had in Paul S. Collins's "Banvard's Folly: Thirteen Tales of People Who Didn't Change the World" (ISBN 978-0312300333).

The Brooklyn-based history band Pinataland recorded a song about Banvard's travails for their 2008 album "Songs for the Forgotten Future Vol. 2".

ee also

*Myriorama
*Panoramic painting


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