The Diorama in Great Britain in the 1820s by R. Derek Wood

First published in the quarterly journal History of Photography, Autumn 1993 (Vol 17, #3 pp. 284-295), this online version appears with the kind permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd London

Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851), originally a stage designer and scene painter ¹, in April 1821 formed a partnership with Charles Bouton (1781-1853) to develop a 'Diorama' in Paris. As Helmut and Alison Gernsheim have said in their account of the Diorama in L. J. M. Daguerre: The history of the Diorama and the Daguerreotype, it was 'an ideal collaboration, each gaining much from the other's experience'. Bouton was the more experienced and distinguished painter, Daguerre the greater expert in lighting and scenic effects. ²

Daguerre's aim was to produce naturalistic illusion for the public. Huge pictures, 70 x 45 feet in size, were painted on translucent material with a painting on each side. By elaborate lighting - the front picture could be seen by direct reflected light, while varied amounts and colours of light transmitted from the back revealed parts of the rear painting - the picture could 'imitate aspects of nature as presented to our sight with all the changes brought by time, wind, light, atmosphere'. ³

By light manipulation on and through a flat surface the spectators could be convinced they were seeing a life-size three dimensional scene changing with time - in part a painter's 3-D cinema. To display such dioramas with the various contrivances required to control the direction and colour of the light from many high windows and sky-lights, as well as a rotating amphitheatre holding up to 360 people, a large specialist building was required.

East side of Park Square, and Diorama, Regent's Park, London

Metropolitan Improvements or London in the Nineteenth Century. From Original Drawings by Thomas H. Shepherd with Historical, Topographical & Critical Illustrations by James Elmes, London: published April 11, 1829, by Jones & Co;.

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More about Metropolitan Improvements or London in the Nineteenth Century... is available HERE

Plans for a Diorama in London were set in motion at the beginning of 1823. Taking only four months to finish the building in the centre of John Nash's facade along the east side of Park Square at the south-east corner of Regent's Park, it was opened in September 1823. ⁵.

In 1855 John Timbs wrote, for the benefit of visitors to London, an item on the 'Diorama and Cosmorama':

Charles Bouton also went to London on a least one occasion when the first program was replaced in August 1824, ⁹ but the management situation during the first seven years of the London Diorama was very different to the later period when Bouton moved permanently to England: so it was probably the Arrowsmith brothers who were most closely involved in transporting and setting up the dioramas for the English proprietors in the first few years, as a patent for the Diorama was obtained in England under the name of John Arrowsmith. ¹⁰

John Arrowsmith's Diorama Patent, British Patent No. 4899, February 10, 1824

'An improved mode of publicly exhibiting pictures on painted scenery of every description, and of distributing or directing the daylight upon or through them so as to produce many effects of light and shade, which I denominate a "Diorama".'

Earliest publication of John Arrowsmith's Diorama Patent, British Patent No. 4899

Plate X in The Repertory of Arts, Manufactures and Agriculture (London), April 1825, 2nd series, Vol. XLVI (No. CCLXXV). The text of the Specification appearing on pp.257-265 of this periodical

by courtesy of the British Library

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The Repertory of Arts, Manufactures and Agriculture (which the following year was renamed The Repertory of Patent Inventions), was the semi-official place where many Patents were first published throughout the 1820s and 30s.

The two figures above (in one file) are taken from reduced size reproductions (themselves taken from the original manuscript patent specifications), which were kept for examination in one of three legal patent Rolls offices in London. So The Repertory of Arts, Manufactures and Agriculture can be counted as the first publication of the patent. However, the figures were of an octavo page size and are not in such detail as the official printing done many years later in 1857.

It is also interesting to note that the The Repertory of Arts, Manufactures and Agriculture plate is a reverse left - right hand version (with the spectators amphitheatre appearing on the right) compared with the later official printing showing the diorama display area on the right.

John Arrowsmith's Diorama, 1823

Plate XIII of The London Journal of Arts and Sciences, William Newton, (London) of [1824-]1825, Vol. IX, No. LIV. The text on Arrowsmith's Diorama Patent is on pp. 337-340

by courtesy of the British Library

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R. Derek Wood

Transverse section of John Arrowsmith's twin scene Diorama, London, 1823
from large fold-out plate 2 (drawn by Malby & Sons) in the first official printing in 1857 of British Patent No. 4899

by courtesy of the British Library

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also....

'Diorama, Park Square, Regents Park: Plan of the Principal Story' 1823

Designed by A. Pugin¹ and built by J. Morgan

John Britton and Augustus Pugin¹ Illustrations of the Public Buildings of London. With historical and descriptive accounts of each edifice, vol. 1, plate opposite p. 70, published by J. Taylor: London, 1825

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¹Auguste [or Augustus] Charles Pugin (1762-1832)

'Cross-section of the auditorium and picture emplacement of the Diorama, London'

Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, L. J. M. Daguerre. The History of the Diorama, Dover Publications, New York 1968, figure b on p.21 (original source not known)

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A patent Title provided immediate commercial protection, but sale of contracts would need to wait for a Specification. Why should a patent have been obtained at this time in this way: delayed, then seemingly unnecessarily hurried? The problems of either storage or transport of these huge pictures would have been severe even when rolled-up. But it obviously made sense to be able either to transfer the pictures from Paris onto another building in London,or to sell them,and the same reasoning can be applied to lengthening their life after a season in London. The main problem would be the very high cost of new purpose-built Dioramas. Such third stage activity in getting the dioramas before wider audiences is obviously not something in which Daguerre would choose to be closely envolved.

At a time of widespread social deprivation the economic situation was very unsettled: a depressed market in the late 1820s, there was also, particularly in the few years before 1825, a glut of capital. What reason would there have been for a patent unless to be part of a commercial contract sought from men of capital to exploit the dioramas elsewhere after the end of a season in London? The promptness with which the Diorama specification was enrolled suggests that potential licencees were waiting to negotiate. As we will see later, the London Diorama seems to have had an independent English proprietor in the 1820s.

Continues

This document is © copyright R. Derek Wood, 2000. Other than for non-commercial and or scholarly research this document may not be reproduced in any form electronic or otherwise without the written consent of the author R. Derek Wood and the publisher Taylor and Francis

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