biografía de John BANVARD (1815-1891)

Lugar de nacimiento: NYC

Lugar de defunción: Watertown, SD

Direcciones: Louisville, KY; Watertown, SD, 1880-91

Profesión: Panorama, landscape, and portrait painter

Exposiciones: Boston Athenaeum; NAD, 1861; his panorama of the Mississippi toured from city to city in the U.S., 1846-47 and Europe (England, France, and elsewhere) and North Africa, 1847-.

Obra: Minnesota Hist. Soc.; Mus. City of New York

Comentarios: One of the most successful of the 19th century panoramists. He grew up in NYC but moved to Louisville (KY) when he was just fifteen. He briefly worked in a store before going on the road as an itinerant portraitist. While traveling along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from Cincinnati to New Orleans, he made numerous sketches that he began (in 1840) incorporating into a monumental panorama of the Mississippi. Originally twelve feet high and over thirteen hundred feet long, the work was continually enlarged. On its completion (the panorama is now lost) in 1846 Banvard took the panorama on a wildly successful tour of the United States (seen by over 250,000 people in 1847). He followed this with a tour of Europe and North Africa that included a stop in London that attracted over six hundred thousand people. He also made a copy of the panorama so that it could reach more places. Banvard accompanied the panorama with lectures, music, and a descriptive text (published in 1847 as Description of Banvard's Panorama of the Mississippi River). His travels later took him to Europe, Africa, and Asia, and from these he created a panorama of Palestine and the Nile. Banvard was also a prolific writer of verse, plays, novels, and travel books, and retired a wealthy man.

Fuentes: G&W; DAB; Banvard, or, the Adventures of an Artist; Boston Transcript, May 19, 1891, obit.; Swan, BA; Cowdrey, NAD; CAB; McCracken, Portrait of the Old West, 218; G&W has information courtesy J. Earl Arrington. More recently, see Encyclopaedia of New Orleans Artists; McDermott, The Lost Panoramas of the Mississippi; Baigell, Dictionary; Peggy and Harold Samuels, 20-21.