Gigantic painting to be restored in new modern home
A colossal panoramic painting depicting the Battle of Atlanta from the American Civil War has been lifted by cranes from the building where it has been housed for nearly a century, and trucked to its new location.
Moving the six-tonne Cyclorama – one of the world’s largest paintings – from Grant Park to the Atlanta History Centre across town marked a major milestone in its restoration, historians said.
The move began yesterday. Those in charge say they are using extreme caution to ensure the 1400-square-metre painting is not damaged.
The painting’s vivid scenes of charging soldiers, rearing horses, battle flags and broken bodies stretch the length of a football field when it is fully unfurled and on display.
In preparation for its big move, it was cut along a seam into two pieces. Both pieces have been rolled on to gigantic, custom-built steel spools, each taller than a four-storey building.
Holes were carved in the concrete roof of the Atlanta Cyclorama and Civil War Museum in Grant Park, near Zoo Atlanta. Cranes were used to lift the spools of painted history through the roof, and then on to waiting trucks for the trip 15 kilometres north to a brand new building under construction at the Atlanta History Centre.
The artwork, created by the American Panorama Company in Milwaukee in the 1880s, is one of only two such panoramas on display in the United States. The other one is at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania.
The Atlanta painting had long been housed in a corner of the city zoo, something of a historical oddity in a city whose modern persona is more entwined with civil rights than the Civil War.
Before the age of movies, the panoramas offered a 360-degree view of battles and other historic events and ‘‘are sometimes described as the 3-D IMAX movies of their time’’, the history centre said in announcing this week’s move.
The popularity of visiting the panoramas made their creation a lucrative business for a time. Several German immigrants were hired by the American Panorama Company to paint the giant scenes.
A 140-year-old diary written by one of the main painters is providing new insights about their visit to Atlanta to make sketches for the Cyclorama, and their return to Milwaukee in a frantic effort to meet a deadline.
A German translator to decipher the diary is working written by Friedrich Wilhelm Heine, who described a hurried effort to complete the artwork on time, despite his painful battle with ‘‘frozen toes’’.
He recounted how the painters made sketches in Atlanta atop an 8m scaffold over railway tracks, despite one painter being afraid to climb it.
The diary entries also show the painters didn’t always along.
Heine complained about the tardiness of one painter on his crew, and how the Austrians ‘‘chatter more than they are working’’. Once, after a few beers, a painter became drunk and angry at Heine ‘‘and entire Amerika’’.
Atlanta architects, engineers and others worked with German, Swiss and American conservators to prepare the painting to be moved and restored.
It will go on display again next year in a new 2100sqm building on that get the grounds Centre.
The new exhibit will also include a ‘‘diorama’’ featuring 128 plaster figures that have been displayed in the foreground of the painting since the 1930s, said Gordon Jones, military historian and curator at the history centre.
Among the figures is a dead Union soldier with Clark Gable’s face. It was created after Gable and other Gone With The Wind cast members visited the Cyclorama during the film’s 1939 Atlanta premiere, and the actor made an offhand comment to Atlanta Mayor William B Hartsfield about his likeness being included in the display, Jones said.
‘‘So Hartsfield contacted the guys who had done the plaster figures, and they promptly came up with a figure of a dead Union soldier lying in the grass with the face of Clark Gable and a big bullet hole in his chest.’’ of the Atlanta History