Nearly two hundred years ago, a French artist spent weeks atop London’s St Margaret’s Church, creating an incredibly detailed view of the city as it was in 1815. This month, his 7-metre-wide 360° painting goes on display at the Museum of London.
Actually, the painting, huge as it is, was only Pierre Prevost’s sketch for a much larger version, 30 metres wide, that has now been lost. It was displayed in Paris in 1817.
Landscape panoramas were a popular entertainment in Europe and in America (where a restored view of the Battle of Atlanta recently went on view). Prevost produced a number of them, but only the London sketch and a full-scale Constantinople survive. That one’s on display at the Louvre in Paris.
Among the things to be seen in the view are the old Palace of Westminster, Buckingham Palace, St Martin-in-the-Fields and Waterloo Bridge, under construction. There are also cattle grazing in St James’s Park, and the skyline-dominating St Paul’s Cathedral.
