Outdoor Cosmorama Genus (ca. 1830 - 1903)

Figure OCG.1 – Outdoor Cosmorama at a Fairground
Source: Fairground Cosmorama, 1903, Postcard, Collection of Stefan Nagel: Schaubuden.de.

The Outdoor Cosmorama is a simultaneous display of multiple images, each enhanced by convex lenses. It is distinguished from the Indoor Cosmorama by not being housed in a permanent building. It is an example of an “optical machine” and is included in the Optical Machine Taxonomy as a member of the Cosmorama family.

 

These were touring amusements set up in temporary buildings, tents or unhoused in the street. Their itinerant, temporary nature marks a step down in prestige from the Indoor Cosmoramas often housed in elegantly appointed quarters in fashionable neighbourhoods and making claim to the status of high-art galleries. The cosmorama depicted in Figure OCG.1 is clearly a down-market version, not only in its surroundings, but also in the salacious content on offer. The three views are labelled “The Fall of Man” implying surrender to sexual temptation, “Wedding Night” and “Lex Heinze” which is a reference to a German anti-obscenity law. Whether or not erotic images were actually shown at German fairgrounds in 1903, the caricaturist is implying that the delights on display are of a merely bodily kind – they carry the stigma of mechanical art.

 

For ease of transport these displays were often made of light-weight materials. ...the temporary,throw-away illusions of the stage

List of Species

Each row in the following table represents a different species:

 

Fabric Cosmorama:
	Girona Cosmorama	German Tent	French Tent

These were touring outdoor cosmoramas with viewing-walls made, like stage-flats, from fabric on wood frames . They were probably mostly set up within circus tents.

 

The Girona Cosmorama exhibited vues d'optique. Others may have exhibited paintings, in which case they would be a separate species.

Kinder Cosmorama:
	Korporaal Smit

This is an outdoor cosmorama housed in a tent. Its fictional proprietor, Korporaal Smit, was previously a Raree Show man who in 1877 had gone up-market. What marks his device as a cosmorama rather than raree show is the wide distance between the furthest left and right lenses and the fact that, like the Girona Cosmorama, the lenses occupy sections painted on the viewing-wall. What makes it a separate species from Fabric Cosmoramas is the line of lower lenses for children..

Temporary Building:
	No Image

Hubert Sattler's touring Cosmorama (1840-1870) consisted of large paintings (H=100 x W=130 cm) and “a specially made temporary building” to house them in.^[xxx]

 

Van Cosmorama:
	No Image

Hutchinson’s Fine Art Exhibition was described in 1861 as “Twenty-five glasses around a Van.” ^[xxx] It probably looked something like a Russian Raek, although longer. The viewers would have stood outside the structure looking in – the reverse of the room-style cosmorama. The number of lenses suggests that numerous images must have been viewed simultaneously, so it was not a large Raree Show. The pretentious name also suggests a cosmorama.

 

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