Paul Dominique Philippoteaux (27 January 1846 – 28 June 1923) was a French artist. He is best known for a

cyclorama A cyclorama is a panoramic image on the inside of a cylindrical platform, designed to give viewers standing in the middle of the cylinder a 360° view, and also a building designed to show a panoramic image. The intended effect is to make vie ...

illustrating the

Battle of Gettysburg The Battle of Gettysburg () was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War. In the battle, Union Major General George Meade's Army of the Po ...

Life and career

Paul Philippoteaux was born in Paris, the son of the French artist Henri Emmanuel Felix Philippoteaux. His education was at the Collège Henri-IV, the

École des Beaux-Arts École des Beaux-Arts (; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth century ...

in Paris, and in the studio of his father, as well as the studios of Leon Cogniet, and Alexander Cabanal. He became interested in cycloramas and in collaboration with his father created ''The Defence of the Fort d'Issy'' in 1871. Other works included ''Taking of Plevna'' (Turko-Russian War), the ''Passage of the Balkans'', ''The Belgian Revolution of 1830'', ''Attack in the Park'', ''The Battle of Kars'', ''The Battle of Tel-el-Kebir'', and the ''Derniere Sortie''. Philippoteaux was commissioned by a group of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

investors in 1879 to create the Gettysburg Cyclorama. He spent several weeks in April 1882 at the site of the

Gettysburg Battlefield The Gettysburg Battlefield is the area of the July 1–3, 1863, military engagements of the Battle of Gettysburg within and around the borough of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Locations of military engagements extend from the site of the first shot ...

to sketch and photograph the scene, and he extensively researched the battle and its events over several months. Local photographer William H. Tipton created a series of panoramic photographs shot from a wooden tower erected along present-day Hancock Avenue. The photos, pasted together, formed the basis of the composition. Philippoteaux also interviewed several survivors of the battle, including Union generals

Winfield S. Hancock Winfield Scott Hancock (February 14, 1824 – February 9, 1886) was a United States Army officer and the Democratic nominee for President of the United States in 1880. He served with distinction in the Army for four decades, including service ...

Abner Doubleday Abner Doubleday (June 26, 1819 – January 26, 1893) was a career United States Army officer and Union major general in the American Civil War. He fired the first shot in defense of Fort Sumter, the opening battle of the war, and had a p ...

, Oliver O. Howard, and

Alexander S. Webb Alexander Stewart Webb (February 15, 1835 – February 12, 1911) was a career United States Army officer and a Union general in the American Civil War who received the Medal of Honor for gallantry at the Battle of Gettysburg. After the war, he w ...

, and based his work partly on their recollections. Philippoteaux enlisted a team of five assistants, including his father until his death, to create the final work. It took over a year and a half to complete. The finished painting was nearly 100 yards long and weighed six tons. When completed for display, the full work included not just the painting, but numerous artifacts and sculptures, including stone walls, trees, and fences. The effect of the painting has been likened to the nineteenth century equivalent of an

IMAX IMAX is a proprietary system of high-resolution cameras, film formats, film projectors, and theaters known for having very large screens with a tall aspect ratio (approximately either 1.43:1 or 1.90:1) and steep stadium seating. Graeme F ...

theater. It was the largest painting on canvas until at least 1964.Gettysburg Cyclorama again for sale
/ref> His

Cyclorama of Jerusalem The Cyclorama of Jerusalem is located in Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Quebec, near the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré. It is a cyclorama, a circular painting, of the Crucifixion of Jesus, showing what the city of Jerusalem might have looked like a ...

was completed in 1895. Other paintings included ''Retour d'un pardon'' (1864), ''Vannenses'' (1865), ''Marche en Bretagne'' (1865), and ''Scene d'invasion'' (1866), which were all exhibited at the

Paris salon The Salon (french: Salon), or rarely Paris Salon (French: ''Salon de Paris'' ), beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art ...

. Philippoteaux made drawings that were engraved by Charles Laplante ( fr) to illustrate the 1877 first edition of

Jules Verne Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraor ...

's novel ''Hector Servadac'' (or ''

Off on a Comet ''Off on a Comet'' (french: Hector Servadac) is an 1877 science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne. Plot The story starts with a comet called Gallia, that touches the Earth in its flight and collects a few small chunks of it. The disas ...

'').

References

External links

Restoration of the Gettysburg Cyclorama
April 2005) at

American Heritage Magazine ''American Heritage'' is a magazine dedicated to covering the history of the United States for a mainstream readership. Until 2007, the magazine was published by Forbes.

Gettysburg Cyclorama
image at NYTimes.com (requires

QuickTime QuickTime is an extensible multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. Created in 1991, the latest Mac version, QuickTime X, is avai ...

)
Boston Public Library
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Philippoteaux, Paul 19th-century French painters French male painters 20th-century French painters 20th-century French male artists French Realist painters Painters from Paris 1846 births 1923 deaths French war artists École des Beaux-Arts alumni 19th-century war artists 19th-century French male artists