(#168526) Yosemite[.] The general verdict of those who have seen them both is that the Yosemite cyclorama, now being exhibited at the corner of Tenth and Market Streets, San Francisco, is "next to a visit to the valley." Admission 25 cents [cover title]. THE TRAVELER.

Yosemite[.] The general verdict of those who have seen them both is that the Yosemite cyclorama, now being exhibited at the corner of Tenth and Market Streets, San Francisco, is "next to a visit to the valley." Admission 25 cents [cover title]. [San Francisco, Cal. Published by the Traveler, no. 602 Market Street], n.d. [1893-1894]. 14.5 cm, [1-16] pages (not paginated), 8 illustrations (including one on the cover), self wrappers, stapled. First edition. A promotional brochure advertising the Yosemite cyclorama painted by Charles Dorman Robinson displayed in San Francisco at the Traveler's Bureau of Information. While not the first large scale painting of Yosemite (the earliest was a 700 square foot panorama, commissioned by the Mann Brothers in 1855, painted over a two year period by Antoine Claveau, who exhibited it in San Francisco in 1857), Robinson's gigantic panorama was by far the most ambitious. The cyclorama, painted during 1892 and 1893, depicted the valley from the south wall near Inspiration Point. It was 50 feet high, 380 feet long, and weighed five tons (three tons of paint on two tons of canvas). According to David Robertson, West of Eden: A History of the Art and Literature of Yosemite ([Yosemite Valley, California and Berkeley, California]: Copublished by Yosemite Natural History Association and Wilderness Press, [1984]), pp. 106-108: "Robinson wanted his panorama to be so realistic that viewers would have the illusion of actually standing on Yosemite's rim gazing at the prodigious scene below. To help create the effect of verisimilitude he furnished the viewing platform with real Yosemite rocks and planted shrubbery of the species actually found there ... The fate of the panorama was not a happy one. Its San Francisco showing was a financial failure. Robinson took it to the Paris Exposition of 1900 but was unable to have it displayed. So he cut it up into marketable sizes and sold enough of them to earn passage back to the States. The whereabouts of the pieces is unknown." Robinson's illustrated account of the creation of this work is his "Painting a Yosemite Panorama," Overland Monthly, 22 (September 1893), 243-56. A fine copy. (#168526).

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