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The following essay was written by Tom Hardiman as a catalogue essay for the catalogue The Grand Moving Panorama of Pilgrim's Progress (ISBN 0-936489-57-X) which accompanied the exhibition of the same title which premiered January 31, 1999 at The Montclair Art Museum and toured to two other venues. The exhibition was organized by The Montclair Art Museum. The essay is reprinted with permission of the Montclair Art Museum.

 

The Panorama's Progress: The History of Kyle & Dallas's Moving Panorama of Pilgrim's Progress

by Tom Hardiman


In October of 1896, the York Institute in Saco, Maine received a donation of a most unusual painting, an enormous panorama illustrating John Bunyan's allegorical narrative, Pilgrim's Progress. The painting is the second version of an original conceived in 1848, and was painted by Joseph Kyle and Jacob Dallas in 1850-51, based on the designs of many prominent artists. At the time, the press declared the 8-foot tall, 900-foot long painting a "valuable addition" to the museum's eclectic collection of regional art, col
onial relics, and natural history specimens, even though the full history of the huge painting had already been lost.[1]

By the time the gift was made to the Institute, the panorama was nearly half a century old, and somewhat of a relic itself, having endured decades of wear and neglect. This was in stark contrast with its initial reception in the early 1850s, when it was a tremendously popular traveling show touring much of North America. Then through the 1870s, the panorama became a sideshow attraction playing in southern Maine churches, meeting houses, and barns. Aside from the 1896 press notice of the acquisition and an exhibition of part of the panorama at the York Institute the following year, the object was neglected. It was never catalogued or labeled, and the significance of the two huge rolls of painted cotton sheeting was soon forgotten. By 1925, the panorama had become so obscure that the local newspaper ran a feature about its regrettable disappearance.[2] Then, in 1996 -- a century after the York Institute acquired the panorama -- it was rediscovered in the museum's basement. As a result, its remarkable history can now be pieced together.[3]

The Panorama of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress was a product of the mid-nineteenth century phenomenon of moving panoramas. The huge stationary panoramas common earlier in the century were supplanted in America by paintings on muslin or sheeting, which were placed on spools and reeled across a stage, simulating movement as if observed from the deck of a ship or the seat of a rolling railroad car. Moving panoramas were more portable than fixed panoramas and did not require a specialized building for exhibition and so could benefit from traveling to various audiences. For example, the incredible financial success of John Banvard's moving panorama of the Mississippi River which toured in America starting in 1846, and England in 1848, inspired many entrepreneurial artists to paint panoramas of their own.[4] In the ensuing decade, hundreds of moving panoramas, depicting myriad voyages, travels, and historical events, were exhibited as traveling entertainments all across the country. Of the scores of panoramas created in this "Age of Panoramas," only a handful survive due to their frequent rolling and unrolling. But even if they all had survived, the Panorama of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress would most likely be the most significant today, because of its unique connection to both popular and fine art via its association with important artists of the National Academy of Design in New York.

Part One of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress was first published in 1678 with Part Two appearing six years later. It follows the symbolic journey of Christian and later his wife Christiana from their doomed existence in the City of Destruction to salvation in the Celestial City. Along the way, Christian endures various tests of faith. Early in the story Christian almost drowns in the murky Slough of Despond, is forced to climb Hill Difficulty on his hands and knees, and survives a battle with the monster Apollyon as well as a passage through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. However, his pilgrimage also induces joyful episodes, such as his visit to the Palace Beautiful. Because of its moral plot, vivid imagery, and appeal to the common person, the book was wildly popular in England and America and was already in its tenth edition by 1685.[5] During the Protestant revival of the early nineteenth century, Pilgrim's Progress was regarded as second only to the Bible as the most widely read and translated book of the era.[6]

Kyle and Dallas's panorama was not the first attempt to bring Bunyan's allegory to the stage in a panoramic format. A small panorama of fifteen scenes from Pilgrim's Progress toured the northeast in 1845, and the Italian-trained portraitist Alfred Hart exhibited a panorama of the same subject in Hartford in 1848.[7] Neither of these earlier attempts to break the purely scenic format of most panoramas by illustrating stories from literature seems to have been successful.

In contrast, the panorama of Pilgrim's Progress initiated by Edward May and Joseph Kyle in 1848 was so successful that it grossed $100,000 in its first six months. Unlike most panoramas, which were created by amateur artists or theatrical scene-painters, May and Kyle's Pilgrim's Progress was executed by formally trained artists. May and Kyle, two associate members of the National Academy of Design, solicited compositions from some of their better-known fellow academicians.[8]

Edward Harrison May (1824-1887) was born in England, but came to America as a youth, when his father, a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, was asked to take a parish in New York City.[9] As a young man, he studied engineering before taking up painting under the National Academician Daniel Huntington. May's Protestant background might have inspired him to illustrate Bunyan's classic Protestant allegory. He would have been familiar with Huntington's Mercy's Dream and Christiana and Her Family Passing through the Valley of the Shadow of Death (1842-44, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts), which depict scenes in the second part of Pilgrim's Progress. He would have also known Thomas Cole's moralistic Cross and the World series (1848-48, unlocated), which echoes themes in Pilgrim's Progress.

May was also part of the rising trend of exhibiting compositions based on scenes from Bunyan. The American Art-Union exhibition of 1847 featured May's Bunyan Parting with his Blind Daughter (unlocated) as well as Jesse Talbot's Christian and the Cross (unlocated). The same year at the National Academy of Design, Huntington exhibited his Mercy Fainting at the Wicket Gate (unlocated) and Frederic Church exhibited Christian on the Border of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, which was followed the next year by its companion, The River of the Water of Life (unlocated). Each of these subjects inspired a scene in the panorama.[10]

May's partner in the panorama project, Joseph Kyle (1809-1863) was a native of Cleremont County, Ohio. He had studied painting in Cincinnati and later in Philadelphia under Thomas Sully and Bass Otis. In 1846, Kyle moved to New York, where he exhibited portraits and still lifes, but became best known for his work on panoramas.[11] Between 1848 and 1858, Kyle painted at least nine panoramas, mostly in partnership with his son-in-law, Jacob Dallas (1825-1857), a popular illustrator whose work appeared in Harper's, Leslie's, and Putnam's magazines.[12] When he returned to painting portraits after Dallas's untimely death in 1857, Kyle was described as "among the few of our artists, who were born for another sphere in art. With the lamented Dallas, he wrought those magnificent series of panoramas which have never been, and never may be equaled."[13]

To enhance the appeal of their panorama as a work of art, May and Kyle solicited some of the most prominent artists working in New York for designs of passages from Bunyan. Daniel Huntington granted permission to copy his Mercy's Dream and Christiana and Her Children, provided the owners of the works would also consent.[14] Frederic Church contributed a variant of his Valley of the Shadow of Death, and Jasper Cropsey submitted two small sketches for The Land of Beulah, and The River of the Water of Life.[15] Designs were also received from the popular illustrator Felix Octavius Carr Darley, and from Peter Paul Duggan, the professor of drawing at New York's Free Academy. Three designs for scenes in the panorama are credited to the London illustrator and panoramist Henry Courtney Selous, and are based on his line drawings of Pilgrim's Progress, which were issued by the London Art-Union in 1844, and republished with text and a second set of illustrations later that year by M. M. Holloway of London.[16]

Several scenes in the panorama are closely related to the British Romantic artist John Martin's well-known mezzotints illustrating the 1827 edition of Paradise Lost by Joseph May, the mentor of Selous.[17] The most obvious similarity is May's figure of Apollyon, which directly relates to Martin's Conflict Between Satan and Death. Likewise, Cropsey's conception of the Land of Beulah is similar to Martin's composition for Adam and Eve and the Angel Raphael, from the same series. In a less direct way, the rolling river of fire in Valley of the Shadow of Death, (whose design was credited to Church) is reminiscent of a similar feature in Martin's Satan on the Lake of Fire. The depiction of the Wicket Gate in scene four of the panorama echoes the composition of Martin's Expulsion of Adam & Eve. Kyle's version of the Land of Beulah, which was described as "the landscape gem of the entire Work,"[18] is little more than an elongated copy of Martin's Celestial City, published to illustrate a new edition of Pilgrim's Progress in 1830. Likewise, Felix Darley's design for Death of the Giant Grim is closely related to an engraving of the same scene by William Harvey in the same edition.

Similar connections can be made to works by the English artist William Blake. May's designs for Bunyan Dreaming, Christian Meditating in the Field, and Giant Despair Visits the Pilgrims in Their Dungeon are surprisingly similar to Blake's compositions of the same passages.[19] Like Blake, May dressed Bunyan's characters in long robes or medieval garb, rather than in the seventeenth-century costumes that typically appear in illustrations of the book. In copying Selous's The Fate of the Apostate, Kyle deleted Selous's original figure of the unfortunate Apostate, and substituted one more closely resembling Blake's The Blasphemer (ca. 1800; Tate Gallery).

The reliance of the panorama painters on pre-existing illustrations and paintings was probably part expedience and part necessity. The religious revival of the early nineteenth century led to dozens of illustrated editions of Pilgrim's Progress in England and America. The engravings in these books were generally copies, with minor variations, of archetypal images of specific passages from Bunyan in earlier editions, especially those of Thomas Stothard in 1788.[20] As artists, May and Kyle wanted to execute unique compositions, but as illustrators, they needed to show their audience images that were familiar and recognizable.

The Panorama of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress made its debut in New York's Washington Hall in November of 1850. In an age when a popular panorama exhibition lasted six or eight weeks, Pilgrim's Progress played to full houses in the same venue in New York for six months straight. Nearly one-third of the city's population -- 200,000 people -- paid 50 cents each for admission.[21] After its extended engagement in New York, the panorama toured through Hartford, Providence, and Boston, and eventually to other eastern cities, including Richmond and Charleston.[22] It was still touring in 1887, when it returned for another six-month run in New York.[23]

In response to the popularity and huge financial success of the panorama, the artist-entrepreneurs crafted a second version of the painting intended to play in cities in the interior of the country while the original toured the Atlantic coast cities.[24] This second version of the panorama had its debut in New York in April of 1851, then traveled to Newark and Elizabethtown, New Jersey before making its way to Maine and ultimately, the York Institute Museum.

By the time the second version of the panorama was ready for exhibition, Edward May had left for Paris to study with Thomas Couture,[25] and was not credited for his designs. Newspaper accounts attribute the painting to Dallas, Kyle, and "Wright," who is probably Charles Washington Wright (1824-1869), an illustrator who worked with Dallas at Harper's and Leslie's magazines.[26] Later, Daniel Huntington's name was added to the credits, along with William Cogswell's.[27] The creators of the second version were insistent that the new panorama not be a direct copy of the first, but a "revised edition" also with 53 scenes. After its initial showing, the New York Tribune reported "The artists have varied the original design in many parts, and with much success."[28]

Because the original panorama is no longer extant, a comparison of the two versions is difficult, but evidence suggests that the revisions were fairly minor. The two scenes from the original work which appeared as wood engravings in R.J. Greenwood's Descriptive Catalogue of the Bunyan Tableaux (originally published in 1851) and a surviving handbill, match scenes in the surviving panorama with minor differences. Contemporary descriptions of scenes in the original Pilgrim's Progress fit the same ones in the surviving copy equally well. A comparison of the sequence of scenes in the panorama with Greenwood's Descriptive Catalogue indicate that three scenes, Hill Difficulty, Pilgrims Leave the Valley of Humiliation, and Christiana Crosses the River of Death, were eliminated from the second version. Hill Difficulty had been singled out by at least one critic who noted this as a weak scene in the original, and the two other scenes, depicting Christiana retracing the steps of her husband's journey, may have been seen as unnecessary repetitions of similar scenes in the first part of the panorama.[29] For unknown reasons, The Arming of Christian and Mercy Faints at the Wicket Gate, were relocated in the sequence of scenes in the second panorama.

As an added attraction, three new scenes were added: Bunyan Parting with his Blind Daughter; Christiana, Her Children, and Secret; and Mercy's Dream. The first of the new scenes is almost certainly the design May exhibited in 1847 and suggests that May was involved in the early stages of the "revised edition." The scene inspired by Daniel Huntington's Mercy's Dream is notable in that it is physically inserted into the panorama (having been painted on a separate piece of fabric), sewn in just before They Lose Their Way in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. This alteration of the second version is documented in the Newark Daily Advertiser of May 29, 1851, which reported "A new scene 'Mercy's Dream' has been added."[30]

Further alterations of the design of the panorama are speculative. One reviewer of the first panorama, critical of the way the scenes ran together (which resulted in the principal characters often being visible in two places as the painting was rolled across the stage), suggested that the artists should have "isolated the scenes more completely" and "introduced...large intervals of clouds, covering the picture, and only interrupted by successive scenes, into which the chief points of landscape and incident might have been concentrated."[31] In the extant version, the first ten scenes do tend to run together, but the later scenes are more distinctly separated by billowing clouds, outcroppings of rock, sprays of foliage, and architectural elements. In one instance, the artists eased the transition between the nightmarish They Lost Their Way in the Valley of the Shadow of Death and the bucolic Land of Beulah by introducing a sublime dark waterfall that is not part of either scene. It is likely that these alterations were made in response to the criticism as ten scenes had already been painted, in the second version, at the time the review was written.

In a preemptive strike against any criticism that the "revised edition," was inferior, Kyle and Dallas secured a statement from the National Academy of Design, declaring the work "equal if not superior to any work of this class [probably a reference to the moving panorama format] ever exhibited in this country."[32] Thirty-one artists signed the resolution, including John F. Kensett, Jerome Thompson, Thomas Seir Cummings, along with the noted author Bayard Taylor. Later, the painter Emanuel Leutze wrote a personal letter of endorsement for the second version.[33] Newspaper editors would cite these testimonials for more than a decade as proof of the impeccable artistic pedigree of the panorama. Many echoed the sentiment of the editor of the Concord, New Hampshire Independent Democrat when he remarked, "with all the "cheap shows" and second-rate exhibitions of the day, we are glad at length to recognize a work of superior artistic merit and of such excellent character."[34]

One reviewer went so far as to say it was "beyond exception the finest work of art ever produced in this country."[35] However, most echoed the remarks of the Portland Argus, that it was "superior in execution and design to anything of this kind that has visited our City,"[36] thus comparing it -- as had the National Academy of Design -- to the standards of contemporary panorama painting. One has only to see other surviving moving panoramas, such as Russell and Purrington's Whaling Voyage Round the World, to get the impression that most moving panoramas, while grand in scale and conception, made few pretensions to being fine art. With its huge, heroically posed figures and evocative landscapes composed by academically trained artists, Pilgrim's Progress may have been the most sophisticated work of art typical patrons of panoramas had ever seen. The editor of the Argus may have challenged his readers' sense of sophistication by writing, "no person with any pretension to taste, can fail to be charmed with its inimitable scenes."[37]

And yet Pilgrim's Progress is very different from the grand studio paintings its designers were producing at the time. It is broadly and hastily painted, and the colors verge on garishness in order to be legible from a distance. Some scenes are well finished, but others are sketchy. This is consistent, however, with the way a moving panorama was intended to be exhibited. It was rolled out from one giant spool onto another spool, exposing 15-30 feet of the painting at a time, and was usually accompanied by a lecturer and "the low soft melody of an instrument [typically a pianoforte or an organ] appropriately played."[38] In a typical two-hour presentation, each scene would be visible for several minutes, and the viewer might be seated as much as thirty or more feet from the canvas. To finish the scenes like studio oils would have been a waste of effort, given the brief time each scene was on view. Instead, the panoramists created impressions of elaborate historical figure paintings and sublime landscapes.

One of the most universally acclaimed scenes in both versions of the panorama, May's Christian and Hopeful Enter the River of Death, is one of the least complex in composition and sketchiest in execution. Yet a contemporary reviewer summed up the response to this image as it passed across the stage by saying it "is certainly a conception of peculiar power. We know not in all the language of poetic description a combination of figures equal to it."[39] The same writer singled out one of the most finished scenes, Christiana Parts with Her Children, as being "of equal merit." The bold technique along with the short viewing time of each scene, actually enhanced the illustrative and emotional effects of the compositions.

One of the most interesting criticisms of the first version of Pilgrim's Progress -- a criticism doubtless applicable to the extant second version -- appeared in Literary World. "We might object to an excess of gaudy color, particularly towards the close of the series and to a want of softness in an occasional scene."[40] Eight years later the painting was "said to look better than when new, age having a tendency to mellow down and coalesce the tints, and bring out more clearly its artistic beauties."[41] Today, the liberal employment of vivid color is one of the most striking features of the panorama, yet evidently, it was even brighter when it was new.

Besides its own remarkable success, the panorama left a substantial legacy in the arts. At the National Academy of Design exhibition of 1851, Paul Duggan displayed a crayon sketch for Pilgrim's Progress which was probably a design from the panorama, and the following year Jasper Cropsey's designs for the panorama were exhibited at the Academy."[42] Another scene, Hill Difficulty, was redrawn by Felix O. C. Darley as the frontispiece for a popular edition of Bunyan."[43] Henry Courtney Selous published his third set of engravings of Pilgrim's Progress, which, as part of Cassell's Illustrated Bunyan, was frequently reprinted through the end of the century. A large engraving illustrating Pilgrim's Progress, designed by Reverend D. Wright and drawn by Hammett Billings, was published in Boston in 1853 and relates to the panorama by the repeated depiction of the characters in a continuous landscape. Emanuel Leutze, who had endorsed Kyle and Dallas's panorama, contributed to yet another panorama of Pilgrim's Progress which toured in the 1850's and played at New York's "Bunyan Hall" in 1867.[44]

As widely popular as the several versions of the panoramas were, all of them were eventually quickly forgotten. After its debut in New York and New Jersey in 1851, the second panorama went west, and was playing in Detroit in 1853. It returned east for a tour of New England in 1854-55, being "carried from city to city in a beautifully painted cart hauled by two handsome horses."[45] Three years later, it made its second tour through Biddeford, Maine and never seems to have left the region. It made a brief tour of York County in 1864, after which it was shown as a regular feature in an old barn on Hill Street in Biddeford.[46] At some point it became the property of Luther Bryant (1818-1894), a Biddeford real estate agent, whose heirs donated it to the York Institute two years after his death. It seems most likely that Bryant acquired the panorama in 1877, when he purchased the Biddeford property of Charles A. Shaw (1831-1909), a millionaire entrepreneur who ran a chain of theaters in Biddeford, Boston, Lowell, and Providence. Shaw acted as an agent for all types of performers in the region, including the famous showmen P T. Barnum, Artemus Ward, Ossian Dodge, and George W. Peck.[47]

By the time the York Institute Museum exhibited the panorama in 1897, extensive portions of the first roll had been over-painted by Erastus H. Thompson (1847-1918), a Biddeford carriage painter, who signed his name to the back. Thompson defaced the scene of Dawn of Day over the Valley of the Shadow of Death whose design was attributed to Frederic Church, by painting a cartoon ghoul head over Church's ominous black cloud. At some time, approximately 13 scenes were removed from the first roll including River of the Water of Life and Gambler's Booth in Vanity Fair, both regarded as highlights of the original work. Given the threadbare condition of the cotton fabric of the existing portion of the first roll, it seems likely that a large part of the panorama became unexhibitable and was discarded.

Despite the losses and damages, it is miraculous that some forty scenes on 900 feet of sheeting have survived in salvageable condition. The panorama was never intended to be, and could never be considered a great work of art in itself. However, as a document of designs by distinguished American artists, the value of the work is inestimable. Perhaps more important is its existence as a rare surviving example of popular entertainment culture. The panorama also gives us new insight into the relationship between the fine and popular arts of the twentieth century. While the first version of the panorama was still in production, one critic noted:

We like the spirit in which these five or six young men have contributed to this work. It shows that they are superior to the vulgar notion that it is the character of the materials upon which depends the dignity of any undertaking in Art. They know well, it is rather the idea they are to seek to develop which will ennoble their productions, no matter whether they are moulded in earth or carved in marble -- whether they are executed in enduring fresco, or, like this panorama, with common house paints on poor thin cotton cloth...and we may be sure that Art will make but little progress in our own time, unless she descends from her lofty throne, and bestows the charm of her influence in the same way upon the every day pursuits and amusements of the people.[48]

To glimpse the figure of Christian, as large as life and in lurid color, is to share an experience that was once marveled upon by stoic clerics, country "Jonathans," and worldly-wise artists. It would be difficult to imagine any work of art today that could meet the demands and interests of as broad a spectrum of viewers as those who filled gas-lit halls to see the Panorama of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and left feeling utterly satisfied.

Endnotes:

1 Biddeford (ME) Record, 12 October 1896.

2. Biddeford Daily Journal, 17 November 1925.

3. A York Institute volunteer, Mr. Keith Sherburne of Scarborough, first identified the subject as the Panorama of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and another volunteer, Mr. Peter Morelli of Portland, made the connection between the panorama and May & Kyle's Panorama of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.

4. John Hanners, "John Banvard's Mississippi Panorama," American History Illustrated, 17 (1982, no. 7), pp. 30-39. For a more thorough treatment of the influence of panoramas in American art and society, see Kevin J. Avery, The Panorama and its Manifestation in American Landscape Painting, 1795-1870 (Ph.D. diss.: Columbia University 1995).

5. S. Austin Attibone, A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors (Philadelphia, 1858; reprint Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1965), p. 283.

6. Ibid., p.284.

7. The Union (Saco, ME) 3 December 1845; 3 June 1846; George C. Groce and David H. Wallace The New York Historical Society's Dictionary of Artists in America 1564 - 1860 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975), p. 296.

8. R. J. Greenwood, Descriptive Catalogue of the Bunyan Tableaux (Albany: Joel Munsell 1856).

9. James G. Wilson and John Fiske, eds. Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York: D. Appleton and Co. 1888), p. 272.

10. Mary Bartlett Cowdrey, American Academy of Fine Arts and American Art-Union Exhibition Record 1816-1852 (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1953), and Mary Bartlett Cowdrey, National Academy of Design Exhibition Record, 1826-1860 (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1943). In the panorama, the designs for Christian at the Cross and Mercy Faints at the Wicket Gate were by Edward May and the design for The River of the Water of Life was by Jasper Cropsey.

11. Correspondence from Robert Kyle McCord, 20 June 1997; Joseph Earl Arrington, "William Burr's Moving Panorama of the Great Lakes, The Niagara, St. Lawrence, and Saguenay Rivers," Ontario History, 51, no. 3 (1959), pp. 2-4.

12. Ibid.

13. Home Journal 20 March 1858, cited in Arrington.

14. Bulletin of the American Art-Union, August 1850, p. 82. I am grateful to Dr. Franklin Kelly for this reference.

15. The designs are documented in Cropsey's account book for September 15, 1850. "for two designs for Panorama 40.00," cited in William S. Talbot, Jasper F. Cropsey 1823-1900 (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc. 1977), p. 311. I am grateful to Kenneth Maddox for this reference. A painting in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection may be a study for the Land of Beulah. See Kenneth Maddox's entry for "Ideal Landscape: Homage to Thomas Cole," in Barbara Novak, ed., The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Nineteenth-Century American Painting (1986; rpt. New York, London and Paris: Artabras, a division of Abbeville Press, 1991).

16. The Art-Union, 6, (March 1844), p. 61.

17. For a discussion of John Martin's influence on diorama exhibitions and Selous's panorama based on Martin's engraving of Milton's Pandemonium (1827), see Ralph Hyde, Panoramania! (London: Trefoil Publications in association with Barbicon Art Gallery, 1988), pp. 74 and 123.

18. The Literary World, 7 December 1850.

19. Henry Wemyss, "Blake Watercolors from the Frick Collection," Sotheby's Preview, (November 1996), pp. 18-19.

20. David E. Smith, "Illustrations of American editions of Pilgrim's Progress to 1870," Princeton University Library Chronicle, 26, no 1 (Autumn 1964), pp. 16-26.

21. (Biddeford) Union & Journal, 22 October 1858.

22. For an extensive discussion of the panorama's tour and reception in the press, see Avery pp. 234-249.

23. Ibid., p. 246.

24. Bulletin of the American Art-Union, (June, 1851), p. 48. Duplicate copies of successful panoramas were not uncommon. Kyle painted two copies of his panorama of the St. Lawrence River in 1848 (Arrington, p. 25). The York Institute panorama is documented as the second May & Kyle panorama in contemporary advertisements and by Jacob Dallas's signature on scene 18.

25. Bulletin of the American Art-Union, (June 1851), p. 50.

26. Groce & Wallace, p. 704.

27. e.g. Salem Register, 29 January 1855.

28. "Another Pilgrim's Progress," New York Tribune, 30 April 1851, p. 5. I am grateful to Dr. Kevin Avery for this reference.

29. Greenwood, p.30.

30. I am grateful to Dr. Kevin Avery for this reference.

31. Bulletin of the American Art-Union, December 1850), p. 156.

32. Newark Daily Advertiser, 3 May 1851. I am grateful to Dr. Kevin Avery for this reference.

33. Portsmouth Morning Chronicle, 9 February 1855.

34. (Concord, NH) Independent Democrat, 15 March 1855.

35. See Greenwood, p. 31.

36. Eastern Argus, 25 September 1855.

37. Ibid.

38. Home Journal, quoted in Greenwood, pp. 30-31.

39. St. Louis Intelligencer, quoted in handbill "The Splendid Moving Mirror of the Bunyan Tableaux," Toronto, 22 October 1857.

40. The Literary World, 23 November 1850, p. 411.

41. The Union & Journal (Biddeford, ME), 22 October 1858.

42. Bulletin of the American Art-Union, (June 1851); and Talbot, p. 285.

43. Pilgrim's Progress, (New York: American Tract Society), n. d.

44. Smith, p. 24; also see Avery, p. 247.

45. Biddeford Daily Journal, 17 November 1925.

46. Ibid.

47. York County Independent, 7 June 1877. Edwin Emery, A.M. History of Sanford, Maine (Fall River: William Morrell Emery, A.M., 1901), pp. 502-506.

48. Bulletin of the American Art-Union, (August 1850), p. 82. 18

Please also see our illustrated article on The Grand Moving Panorama of Pilgrim's Progress (8/16/99), which appeared at the Portland Museum of Art.

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