Cyclorama Building - Table of Contents

William Wehner's "Jerusalem on the Day of the Crucifixion" Panorama
By Gene Meier

The  "Jerusalem on the Day of the Crucifixion"panorama was painted in William Wehner's panorama studio in downtown Milwaukee 1885-88 for Chicago, Minneapolis and Buffalo (and later London).

Below are two panels from the panorama:





The girl on the far left in both images is my great aunt, Mathilde Georgine Schley (1864-1941) a model/ artist in Wehner's panorama studio.

American  19th Century rotunda panoramas were the biggest paintings in the world, 50 x 400=20,000 square feet, housed in their own rotundas which were 16-sided polygons.

An important source of information about William Wehner's  panorama studio are the F. W. Heine diaries 1879-1921. These highly illustrated diaries are the only narrative of  William Wehner (1847-1928) of Chicago whose panorama studio was located in downtown Milwaukee.  He imported panorama artists from royal academies in Germany, Switzerland, Austria.




"Among the 'pictorial' exhibits were two cycloramas, one showing the Civil War battle of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge in Tennessee and the other picturing Jerusalem on the Day of the Crucifixion.  The latter had been exhibited in the Buffalo Cyclorama at Franklin and Edward about a decade earlier." - Austin M. Fox, "Symbol and Show: The Pan-American Exposition of 1901," pub. by Meter Enterprises, 1987

Page by Chuck LaChiusa in 2015
| ...Home Page ...| ..Buffalo Architecture Index...| ..Buffalo History Index... .|....E-Mail ...| ..

web site consulting by ingenious, inc.