Robert Barker (painter)
Robert Barker (1739 – 8 April 1806) was a painter from Kells, County Meath, Ireland, known for his panoramic paintings and for his coinage of the word "panorama".[1]
Biography
The itinerant portrait painter Robert Barker coined the word "panorama", from Greek pan ("all") horama ("view"), in 1792 to describe his paintings of Edinburgh, Scotland, shown on a cylindrical surface, which he soon was exhibiting in London, as "The Panorama". The Barker Panorama of Edinburgh from Calton Hill is considered to be the earliest panorama view and held within University of Edinburgh.[2] This six piece set of engravings show a 360 degree view of the city of Edinburgh from a standing position on Calton Hill.
In 1793 Barker moved his panoramas to the first purpose-built panorama building in the world, designed by Robert Mitchell[3] and built in Leicester Square, and made a fortune. Viewers flocked to pay 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 semi-circular 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 meters.
Barker's accomplishment involved sophisticated manipulations of
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.
In Britain and particularly in the US, the panoramic ideal was intensified by unrolling a canvas-backed scroll past the viewer in a
Family
One of his sons,
See also
- A Compendium of Irish Biography. Dublin: M. H. Gill & son.
- Panorama
- Panoramic painting
- International Panorama Council
References
- ^ A Descriptive and Historical account of the Town and County of Newcastle Upon Tyne – Eneas Mackenzie, page 578
- ^ "Collection: Panorama of Edinburgh from Calton Hill | University of Edinburgh Archive and Manuscript Collections". archives.collections.ed.ac.uk. Retrieved 15 September 2022.
- The British Library
- ^ Webb, Alfred (1878). "Barker, Robert". A Compendium of Irish Biography. Dublin: M. H. Gill & son. p. 9. Retrieved 30 May 2010.
- ^ See Royal Strand Theatre.
- Ralph Hyde, Panoramania, 1988 (exhibition catalogue)
- Object Lessons:Edinburgh from Calton Hill
Attribution:
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Barker, Robert (1739–1806)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. .