Panorama

“ The hills on either hand descend upon the sea with long-drawn delicately broken outlines, so delicately tinted with aerial hues at early dawn or beneath the blue light of a full moon the panorama seems to be some fabric of fancy, that must fade away, 'like shapes of clouds we form,' to nothing. ”

“ In other climes and with other surroundings we have felt languor, or dullness, or restive incapacity, but here, with the potent inspiration of the panorama and the atmosphere, our whole being bounds with daring briskness and mastering activity. ”

“ If an occasional glance is given at the steep declivity, and a thought occurs as to what would be the consequence of a mishap, the attention is immediately diverted to some new magnificence in the wildly beautiful panorama, the sight of which alone would almost compensate for so long a journey. ”

“ The beholder is at first unimpressed by any detail; he is overwhelmed by the ensemble of a stupendous panorama, a thousand square miles in extent, that lies wholly beneath the eye, as if he stood upon a mountain peak instead of the level brink of a fearful chasm in the plateau whose opposite shore is thirteen miles away. ”

“ In the enjoyment of a landscape, it is safe to say that for nine tenths of the observers the chief satisfaction comes from recognising the various peaks, villages, castles, etc., in the panorama. There is one more point. ”

“ You have, perhaps, been looking for a rough country with great glacier- sculptured walls or imposing rugged scenery on nearing the falls. You do not suspect they are near and if you approach Prospect Point in an automobile, you are in sight and sound of them ere you are aware.
Here the vast panorama is presented to you. You are hardly prepared for so much at once. ”

“ We have been led to expect much; they have assured us and we have often read, that the view from Inspiration Point is surpassed by few panoramas in the world—if, indeed, by any—for grandeur of mountain, cliff, and peak and for beauty of contour and color, and all of these are enhanced by the magic of the hour when we are so fortunate as to see it. ”

“ A panorama, correctly speaking, is a large circular representation of one place only, (such as Rome, Athens, Thebes, Paris,) comprising as much as the eye can take in at a view. The spectators, looking from an elevated platform in the centre, see the painting all around them in every direction, and appearing the size of reality, but always stationary. ”

“ But it is true that sometimes an enveloping darkness aids one to clearer vision; as in a panorama building, for example, where the obscurity about the entrance prepares one better for the climax, and gives the scene depicted a more real and vivid appearance. ”

“ We swept through the prettiest little curving arms of the lake, among these colossal green walls, enjoying new delights, always, as the stately panorama unfolded itself before us and rerolled and hid itself behind us; and now and then we had the thrilling surprise of bursting suddenly upon a tremendous white mass like the distant and dominating Jungfrau, or some kindred giant, looming head and shoulders above a tumbled waste of lesser Alps. ”

“ The pretended guide who says that the painted panorama, seen from the rubber-tired car, is as good as the view from the summit is simply a fakir and is generally recognized as such. The mountain will stand ”

“ Then thirteen hundred miles of desert solitudes; of limitless panoramas of bewildering perspective; of mimic cities, of pinnacled cathedrals, of massive fortresses, counterfeited in the eternal rocks and splendid with the crimson and gold of the setting sun; of dizzy altitudes among fog-wreathed peaks and never-melting snows, where thunders and lightnings and tempests warred magnificently at our feet and the storm clouds above swung their shredded banners in our very faces! ”

“ If it is a street, and if you wish to express its perspective, and the bit of blue sky beyond, with a burst of sunlight illumining the corner, the figures crowded against the light, forming a mass in themselves, and it interests you at a glance, sit down and study it long enough to find out what feature of the landscape impressed you at first sight. ”

“ How bright the planets show when seen from a deep valley on such a night, and how marvellous and grand the sight when from almost total darkness and confused or indistinguishable detail the whole beauty of the view steals out, line by line, giving time to admire each new feature as it springs into sight, until finally the whole glorious landscape and wondrous river are spread before in a soft blending of light and shade impossible to adequately picture or describe. ”

“ CLOUD SCENERY ever varying in size and form, so that the eye was involuntarily attracted to the scenery of the sky, as well as to that of the land; for the changeful sky-scape—as Turner, Constable, and other painters have shown—lends a wonderful charm to our English scenery,—clouds that caused vast cool-gray shadows to chase each other in endless succession over the wide countryside, till, space-diminished, the shadows vanished into infinity, where the circling gray of the dim horizon melted into a misty nothingness. ”

“ As to the earthly scenery, there are but two ‘views’ on the plain; for the aspect of the light is the whole landscape. To look with the sun or against the sun—this is the alternative splendour. To look with the sun is to face a golden country, shadowless, serene, noble and strong in light, with a certain lack of relief that suggests—to those who dream of landscape—the country of a dream. The serried pines, and the lighted fields, and the golden ricks of the farms are dyed with the sun as one might paint with a colour. ”

“ What atmospheric effects, what changing lights, all beautiful, invest the outer landscape with magic, even where the scenery is tame. How rarely is it unpleasing to the eye. And it is the same when we turn our eyes inwards, and contemplate the landscape of our own selves, what glories of light flood all, what richness of foliage clothes all, how picturesque are the inequalities! ”

“ Have you never, dear reader, felt, in gazing on some fair landscape, with mountain and stream and forest before you, that the scene was perfect, wanting nothing in form or tone or color, till suddenly a flash of strong sunlight from behind a cloud lit up some spot with a glorious lustre, to fade away as quickly into the cold tint it had worn before? ”

“ If in a landscape, for instance, the interest of the sky dominates that of the land, the vision will centre there and come out through the foreground, and it is important that the eye have such a course marked out for it, lest, left to itself, it slip away through the sides, and the continuous chain of reverie be broken. ”

“ But if there be grandeur in the chaotic landscape which spreads out before the startled vision of the spectator on the mountain breast, what must be the sensation inspired by the tremendous view that is afforded from the summit? It is the feeling of complete separation from the earth, of suspension in the sky and looking down upon the world below. ”

“ Now, the material mystery of actual landscape arises from the presence of an appreciable atmosphere, softening forms, etherealizing distances, modifying color, and lending the glow of variously refracted light to every object falling under its influence. ”

“ The scene, in short, has about it that solemn impressive repose which irresistibly arrests the fancy, and sets it to dress up into fantastic shapes the massive clouds that float in the western sky, to picture grim forms amid the misty shadows of the valley, or to dwell half dreaming upon the memories of the past, that come crowding through the mind in quick succession. ”

“ Formerly landscapes had been used as backgrounds, oftentimes attractive and beautiful, while the real purpose of the pictures centred in the human figures. The distinctive feature of nineteenth-century landscape is the representation of Nature alone, and the variety of method used and the differing aims of the artists cover the entire gamut between absolute Realism and the most pronounced Impressionism. ”

“ What is seen by the bodily eye—mountain, valley, or plain—serves but as a veil, beyond which, as we raise it, visions of long-lost lands and seas rise before us in a far-retreating vista. Pictures of the most diverse and opposite character are beheld, as it were, through each other, their lineaments subtly interwoven and even their most vivid contrasts subdued into one blended harmony. ”

“ The scenery too was real scenery—not painted canvass, that required distance to give it the effect of reality: the greensward, the blue sky and bluer sea, the rocky islands, the distant hills and mountains, were painted by the hand of the greatest of all Artists ”

“ It is a noble landscape, where every feature is bold, and throughout which light and shade alternate in broad, effective masses, showing that you are gazing on a scene of great extent, and taking in miles of country with your eye. ”

“ The sun was shining upon a landscape over which clouds never hover. You pull your overcoat around you on this cold July day, and look through your closed windows for the other canard—the landscape. The landscape is all there according to the book, and for that you are thankful, but how changed! As far as the eye can reach and ten times farther are beautiful rock-colored rocks, and dust-colored dust and thorny thorns and dust-hidden sky. ”

“ In this part of the picture, the landscape, it must be considered as one of the most felicitous works of genius, where, by a few significant tints and touches, there is unveiled a world of beauty. You see the roots of a single hill only, and a remote mountain-summit, but you think of Alps and Andes, and the eye presses onwards till it at last rests on a low cloud at the horizon. ”

“ The interest of a landscape consists wholly in its relation either to figures present—or to figures past—or to human powers conceived. The most splendid drawing of the chain of the Alps, irrespective of their relation to humanity, is no more a true landscape than a painting of this bit of stone. For, as natural philosophers, there is no bigness or littleness to you. ”

“ The eye travels far into the deep blue distance, tracing peak after peak in the wondrous clearness, until at length sky and mountain are blended into one line of quivering light, and the sight, fatigued with the magnitude and remoteness of objects on the vast horizon, seeks rest by gazing on the tender green of the fair valleys spread so invitingly around. ”

“ On the other hand, ordinary scenery, of familiar mountains, of calm streams of water, and of dwellings just before our eyes, may be sketched with an irregularity so charming, and with such excellent skill, as almost to rival Nature. In pictures such as these, the perspective of gentle mountain slopes, and sequestered nooks surrounded by leafy trees, are drawn with such admirable fidelity to Nature that they carry the spectator in imagination to something beyond them. ”

“ Here is the landscape seen with a poet’s eye, and the color and shining quality of a landscape, it must be remembered, are in the exquisitely sensitive eye that sees, not in the structure and substance upon which it rests. ”

“ The artist in form and color bathes his landscape in 'the light that never was, on sea or land,' or, if not that, in some light or other, some 'tender light which heaven to gaudy day denies,' and which serves to reveal the feeling which he aimed to express through the landscape. ”

“ And from them he has learned to think of a landscape as a rosy sunset, or as a country road with a church steeple and a silver moon. One day he goes to the country, and for hours he does not see a single landscape. ”

“ In fact, the term 'landscape,' as generally understood, applies badly to your paintings, which I should prefer to call 'historical representations.' In a deeper sense, it often seems that this or the other rock, that or the other tree, gazes on us with an earnest look: and that this and the other group of strangely-attired people is like some wonderful crag which has come to life. All Nature, moving in marvellous unity, speaks out the sublime thought which glowed within you. ”

“ Sitting with our faces now up stream, we studied the landscape by degrees, as one unrolls a map, rock, tree, house, hill, and meadow, assuming new and varying positions as wind and water shifted the scene, and there was variety enough for our entertainment in the metamorphoses of the simplest objects. ”

“ Imagination loses itself among the still paths of this ideal country.{23} Bluish backgrounds blend with the sky, and the whole landscape, reproduced in the waters of a tranquil river, forms a scene that no tongue can describe. ”

“ You may always be looking at a natural landscape as at a fine pictorial imitation of one; it seems eternally producing new thoughts in your bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its own. I cannot fancy more delightful, cheerful, silent companions for a man than half a dozen landscapes hung round his study. Portraits, on the contrary, and large pieces of figures have a painful, fixed, staring look, which must jar upon the mind in many of its moods. ”

“ It unveils the lofty mountains and the forests with which they are crowned—the fruitful fields with the crops that cover them—the meadows, with the rivers which water and refresh them—the plains adorned with verdure, the placid lake and the expansive ocean. It removes the curtain of darkness from the abodes of men, and shows us the cities, towns and villages, the lofty domes, the glittering spires, and the palaces and temples with which the landscape is adorned. ”

“ You perceive why there is here a height and there a hollow; you note what has given the ridges and vales their dominant forms and directions; you detect the causes that have spread out a meadow in one place and raised up a hill in another.
Above and beyond all questions as to the connection and origin of its several parts, the landscape appeals vividly to your imagination. You know that it has not always worn the aspect which it presents to-day. You have observed in these ridges proofs that [Pg 298] the sea once covered their site. ”