It was February 22nd, 1849 when John Banvard’s career finally reached dizzying heights. The painter is sitting as a model to be portrayed when the news bursts in the middle of the session that he is expected at Buckingham Palace. Would it be possible for him to have a private screening of his show at Windsor Castle? Her Majesty Queen Victoria and Prince Albert so wish.
The monarchs are like the common people: everyone wants to see Banvard’s show. The son of a building contractor and amateur painter, born in New York in 1815, is perhaps the best-known living artist in the world at the time. And the richest of all.
Within a few years, the man who died 130 years ago on May 16, had achieved world fame. He owed his rise to skill and ambition alone. Because barely 20 years earlier, the world of his sheltered youth had collapsed: in 1831 his father had suffered a stroke, was stolen from his business partner shortly afterwards and finally died. The family had gone bankrupt. Fifteen year old John had to find a job.
Stage painter on the theater boat
He chose Louisville, Kentucky as his first port of call. There it paid off that his father had introduced him to the basics of painting, because soon after his arrival Banvard began making portraits for a fee. Until one day he ran into William Chapman, the owner of the very first theater boat on the Mississippi. For a small wage he was hired on the floating stage, but at least learned how to paint stage sets on the way – a skill that would later prove to be particularly valuable.
© Alamy / The Picture Art Collection (Ausschnitt)
John Banvard (1815-1891) | Anna Mary Howitt painted this portrait of John Banvard in 1849 – the year he gave the private screening for Queen Victoria. In his mid-30s he was at the height of his fame.
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After just one season, he left Chapman’s troupe and built his own. Now he was also an actor, director, and now and then even a magician, all financed by the savings of a benefactor. When his pockets were empty, it turned out that the show was unprofitable. It was not self-sufficient, and Banvard went broke, soon turned to begging, and only through luck found work again as a stage painter. But he had a plan.
As a New Yorker, he came into contact early on with a phenomenon that began in Europe and was known as the “moving panorama”. It was a long, continuous painting that was wound onto two spools. Like the film later, the panorama was unwound from one reel and rolled onto the other. Only a part of the whole was revealed to the audience. Light was not used for projection, but was used for special effects. Moonlight illuminated a bay at night, muzzle flashes flared up in the smoke of a sea battle, lightning flashed. And what was even more important: a showman led the audience through the story with a gripping narrative that passed by the audience.
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