Banvard, Or, The Adventures of an Artist

"His goal was to sketch the river from St. Louis all the way to New Orleans." -Banvard's Folly (2015)
"He was actuated alone by a patriotic and honourable ambition of producing for America the largest painting in the world." - American Art to 1900 (2009)
"Banvard gained international acclaim in the 1840s with the largest painting ever executed." - The Great Plains Region (2004)

In 1840, artist John Banvard (18151891) began to paint large panoramas to be used in a "moving panorama" 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 high and 1300 feet long and was eventually expanded to about half a mile although it was advertised as a "three-mile canvas". It toured around the nation, and was eventually cut up into hundreds of pieces, none of which still exist today.

He premiered his panorama of the Mississippi in Boston in December, 1846. After a run of nearly a year, he took the production to New York City and then to 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.

In 2016, a new musical entitled "Georama: An American Panorama Told on Three Miles of Canvas" premiered at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis.

In 1848, Banvard published a short book of his adventures, titled "Banvard, Or, The Adventures of an Artist."

The book notes that "he was actuated by an honorable ambition, that he should produce the largest painting in the world. One of the greatest difficulties he encountered, was the preparatory labor he had to undergo in making the necessary drawings. For this purpose he had to travel thousands of miles alone in an open skiff, crossing and recrossing the rapid stream, in many places over two miles in breadth, to select proper points of sight from which to take his sketch ..."

Dettagli