Bunyan's Pilgrims on Canvas, on Stage, in the Cellar, and in the Art Gallery: The History, Loss and Renaissance of the Moving Panorama of Pilgrim's Progress

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 15; pp. 112 - 128
• Main Author: Collé-Bak, Nathalie
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2011; The International John Bunyan Society
• Subjects: Art and art history; British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); English literature; Humanities and Social Sciences; Library and information sciences; Literature
• ISSN: 0954-0970

Having been 'conceived by members of the National Academy of Design in New York, with designs contributed by Hudson River School masters Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Cropsey, Daniel Huntington, and others', and thus 'relating] directly to the developing national school of landscape painting', the panorama was deemed 'emblematic of this genre of painting that bridged high art and popular culture'.47 According to Hardiman, 'even if [the scores of panoramas created in the Age of Panoramas] had all 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'.48 Kevin J. Avery, who devoted a chapter of his PhD dissertation to the Moving Panorama of Pilgrim 's Progress,49 stated in an essay written for the 1999 exhibition catalogue of the panorama that '[d]ue to the participation of distinguished easel painters, and to the evident moral support lent by other National Academicians to the enterprise, Panorama ofBunyan 's Pilgrim 's Progress in its two versions represents perhaps the closest link between the fine art of easel painting and the popular art of the panorama in the mid nineteenth century'.50 In artistic terms, a moving panorama is a huge vista painted on one or several wide canvases that, when pieced together and rolled manually, give the viewer the impression of crossing a landscape as if on a train or witnessing the live-action events of a historical moment as if in a Cinéorama.51 Because its function was primarily narrative, its creation necessarily intermittent, and its production intentionally mobile, the one conceived by May and Kyle based on Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is sequential and episodic - and very much like its source in that sense: it tells the stories of Christian and Christiana through a series of scenes or tableaux which are both distinct and linked (narratively as well as pictorially speaking). [...]the Moving Panorama combines the fixed, pictorial dimension of book illustrations and the 'moving' feature of later cinematographic and dramatic adaptations. To one reviewer cited by Avery, the panorama constitutes an 'attempt at representing the imaginary rather than the real'. [...]Avery claims, '[t]he sentiment almost universally expressed in praising the picture was that the art of the moving panorama had finally transcended the limits of the travelogue and ventured into the realms of literature, the imagination, and the ideal'.55 Conclusion As Hardiman makes clear in his assessment of the Moving Panorama of Pilgrim 's Progress, the piece 'was never intended to be, and could never be considered a great work of art in itself. [...]Hardiman contends, the panorama 'also gives us new insight into the relationship between the fine and popular arts of the twentieth century'.57 His conclusion is that, [t]o 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.