PLYMOUTH.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Circle of Observation in the Lower Room, Panorama, Leicester Square, Representing a View of Plymouth. A key to one of Robert Barker's popular panoramas, showing the town and dock alongside Devil's Point, Dartmoor, St. Nicholas (now Drake) Island, and the town of Cawsand. Panoramas "gave individuals the happy feeling that the world was organized around and by them... A double dream came true - one of totality and possession; encyclopaedism on the cheap" (Agathocleous, p. 89).Barker (1739-1806) invented the concept of the panorama in the mid-1780s while walking on Calton Hill in Edinburgh. In 1787 he took out a patent for his "Nature à Coup d'Oeil", a circular building with light entering from the ceiling only. The walls would be covered with a continuous painting stretching around all 360 degrees of the circle, such that the viewers would be fully immersed in the scene. After successful trials in Edinburgh and Castle Street, London, Barker erected a rotunda in Leicester Square in 1792. It housed two panoramas, each on a separate floor, such that one could be replaced while the other was still open for public view. Visitors to Barker's rotunda were able to buy keys to the paintings, which "gave detail to what the audience were seeing. This included names of landmarks and people, and sometimes historical context. The circular designs... allow the viewer to engage with the scene by rotating the paper. Later designs sadly ditched the circular aesthetic, and instead used simple

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