'The smell o' these dead horses': The Toronto Cyclorama and the Illusion of Reality

For Torontonians in the late nineteenth century, the world was illustrated mainly with words. Visual images and photographs were rarely available to corroborate international news coming in from the United States, England, Germany, France, China, Africa, and India. This dearth of visual documentation inspired the Toronto Cyclorama Company to construct the 'strange looking building' on Front Street (Toronto World, 20 August 1887). Inside this giant sixteen-sided domed structure, massive paintings of famous battles or geographical wonders were hung on the surrounding walls. The four-hundred-foot-long canvas encircled the spectators, placing them in the midst of the scene. Hailed as an 'immense success ... the best of all cycloramas,' Toronto's Cyclorama first opened on 12 September 1887, with The Battle of Sedan (Toronto World, 13 September 1887). The Battle of Gettysburg followed in 1889, to be succeeded four years later by Jerusalem: The Crucifixion. But as the 1890s progressed, the Cyclorama's eminence as one of the city's greatest 'amusements' began to fade. In 1897, attractions such as Lumiere's Cinematograph had begun to eclipse the Cyclorama's popularity, and although the Cyclorama proprietors supplemented the paintings with musical acts, concerts, and a carnival-style museum, the crowds were going elsewhere for their entertainment (Toronto Mail and Empire, 7 January 1897). After only eleven years in existence, the Cyclorama building was seized by the City of Toronto as payment for $2095.86 in tax arrears (Toronto Life, July 1972).

In spite of its sad demise, the Cyclorama's artistic, historical, and cultural impact on a relatively untravelled and 'textually informed' city was immense. Newspaper accounts reveal complex reactions to the medium, suggesting that the Cyclorama was more than just amusing entertainment. By analysing these responses we can elucidate the Cyclorama's importance as a narrative device—and the ways in which it employs, troubles, or transcends such narratological effects as author/narrator, time/duration, perspective, and verisimilitude.

The medium's phenomenal popularity throughout the 1880s and early 1890s led to the construction of cyclorama buildings in cities across North America and Europe, including Chicago, Boston, Buffalo, London, and Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré, Quebec. Cycloramas displayed history and art in a way that people had never before experienced. By incorporating props and authentic artifacts into the realistic depictions of historic scenes, the cyclorama created for the spectator a grand illusion of reality. Newspapers described the Toronto Cyclorama's impact by contrasting art and text, suggesting that 'the most brilliant word painter cannot produce the same effect as the artist' (Toronto Mail, 2 December 1889). The medium also inspired an examination of the notion of perspective, and the relationship between reality and art. In an attempt to illustrate these complex theories, an article in the Toronto World described how 'an ordinary hat or cap placed upon the ground near the canvas would seem prodigious, though the same hat thrown on the ground near the platform occupied by the spectator would not attract notice' (Toronto World, 20 August 1887). The lines between reality and art were blurred by the painting's verisimilitude, making it 'so lifelike as to be almost deceptive' (Toronto World, 20 August 1887). Advertisements invited spectators to an 'actual battlefield' to view 'the most realistic war scenes ever exhibited.' These ads not only suggest that the scenes were 'realistic' in appearance, but also imply that the Cyclorama building at 123 Front Street actually housed a battlefield. Whether or not the advertising in fact convinced people, the painting's verisimilitude and the Cyclorama experience impressed itself upon the spectator in a very real way.

The painting's realism also informed the artist's historical and scientific approach to the creative process. In true documentary fashion, the artist conducted fieldwork that involved collecting data, taking photographs, and conducting on-site interviews with participants or witnesses. Returning to the studio or cyclorama building, the artist and his assistants would then begin charting out the scenes and following diagrams and complex multi-planar maps to position the scaffolding around the canvas. Chalk lines on the floor provided reference points for the...