The Panorama

Anybody interested in the Panorama entertainments should be euphoric about the publication of this volume by Reaktion Books. At last a publisher has cared enough about the subject-matter to provide a wealth of illustrations of surviving Panoramas as well as the more conventional reproductions of engravings from nineteenth-century illustrated newspapers. Before the appearance of this volume the high-water mark in number and quality had been reached by Stephan Oettermann's Das Panorama (1980) in its original German edition, for which the publisher provided an envelope containing a number of long colour fold-out reproductions. This excellence in illustration was not matched by Zone Books' translation of Oettermann: when that appeared in 1997 the only colour reproduction was the one on the dust jacket, and there were no foldouts. Reaktion's treatment of Comment's book puts such meanness in perspective, and sets a new standard for the illustration of this subject-matter, which is admittedly difficult to show. The book can therefore function as an obvious teaching tool, and indeed as an invaluable preliminary research tool. Not only are there pictures of finished Panoramas, preliminary studies for Panoramas, and prints produced to illustrate them, but several of the illustrations also show the three-dimensional objects that were arranged in the space between the viewingplatforms and the panoramic canvases in order to set the seal on the visual illusionism. Perhaps the most effective of these is Franz Roubaud's Battle qf Borodino (1912, Moscow: restored 1962). Not only is the number of illustrations to be welcomed, but also their reproductive quality.