Two panoramas of America in London: Mexico City (1826) and Rio de Janeiro (1828)

Carla Hermann [1]

HERMANN, Carla. Two panoramas of America in London: Mexico City (1826) and Rio de Janeiro (1828). 19&20, Rio de Janeiro, v. X, n. 2, jul./dez. 2015. https://www.doi.org/10.52913/19e20.X2.04b [Português]

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1.      Without knowing the title Description of a view of the city of St. Sebastian, and the Bay of Rio Janeiro... [Figure 1] it would take a longer time to identify the city which is the background of the panorama exhibited in London in 1828. The minuscule features require a few seconds of observation. The Sugar Loaf and Corcovado mountain, the most important landmarks of Rio de Janeiro, are shown very discreetly. The structure of the composition, clearly divided into two planes, has one objective: to emphasize the distance between the static city in the background and the vessels in the bay, which are anchored, but free to leave whenever desired. Such vessels are a means of transport of goods and ideas, equipment capable of taking businessmen, innovation and modernity to the city that awaits them in the background. It is difficult to ignore the idea that there is a foreign frigate facing the city which was once colonial, but now is open to foreign ships and the world. This is how Rio de Janeiro was presented to Londoners as a place to be explored. A land subject to new trade and production of knowledge at the eye level of the observer who positions themselves in the center of the rotunda which hosts the huge circular image.

2.      When compared to another Latin American panorama exhibited in London in 1826, whose protagonist is the City of Mexico [Figure 2],[2] it is possible to notice such distinct ways of thinking about nature and space that studying its historical context becomes necessary. Similarities are restricted to where and when the exhibitions took place: both images were enlarged by Robert Burford to a panoramic size for the rotundas and exhibited in the same building in Leicester Square, in the British capital, in the short space of two years from each other. Moreover, as the titles explain by themselves, both images were based on drawings made in situ in both cities in 1823. But the similarities end there. Formally, they represent two very different views. Rio de Janeiro is seen from outside, more specifically from a ship anchored in Guanabara Bay. The author of the sketches made from the ship remains unknown. Mexico City, on the other hand, is portrayed from the roof of its cathedral, located in its main square. W. Bullock's authorship, besides being identified, plays an important role in the choice of Mexico City as a theme.

3.      A collector interested in natural history and promoter of exhibitions of his collections, William Bullock arrived in Veracruz, Mexico, in 1823, to spend six months visiting the capital and the inland of the country. During this trip, sponsored by British investors, he devoted himself to collecting specimens of fauna and indigenous artifacts for his collection, while his son documented the surroundings and the people they met. Upon his return to Britain with many artifacts and drawings, he immediately prepared an exhibition focusing on ancient and modern Mexico which opened to the public in April 1824. The show was assembled in one of the most important exhibition spaces in London at the time: the Egyptian Hall, whose proprietor was Bullock. In the area dedicated to the modern world there were animals dissected by Bullock himself, as well as plants, fruits, flowers, minerals, clothing, crafts, an indian hut and even a real indigenous youth. A descriptive catalog, also created by Bullock, explained to the public everything that was displayed before their eyes. A few weeks later, he published his book of travel memoirs, entitled Six Months Residence and Travels in Mexico

4.      The panoramic visualization was not restricted to panoramas per se, and also needs to be understood within travel narratives and museum exhibits, complementing the representation of particular and rather specific issues with suggestions of totality.[3] In this sense, it can be thought that Bullock intended to offer Londoners a total experience of Mexico. It was in this spirit that the panorama of Mexico City was exhibited.

5.      The relationship between landscape and power, very evident in both views, is pointed out by William J. Thomas Mitchell, who proposes thinking the landscape as a verb, not a noun.[4] As a process through which social identities and subjectivities are formed, the landscape not only means or symbolizes power relations, but it is also a cultural instrument of power in itself. Moreover, it performs the role of a cultural means precisely because it naturalizes social and cultural constructions. It may therefore be an instrument for establishing certain relationships or ideologies. Robert Aguirre focuses specifically on British interests in mineral exploration in Mexico as the motivation behind the panorama exhibition in the London rotunda, for it would provide information meant to convey a feeling of security to British investors around 1825-1826 who, after the initial enthusiasm for the Mexican mines, feared their exhaustion.[5] It is interesting to note that, during his stay in Mexico, Bullock himself had bought a silver mine in Temascaltepec, 150km away from Mexico City, selling all of his businesses in London (including his pre-Hispanic collection and the Egyptian Hall) in 1825 to move to America and dedicate himself to the mining activity.[6] In order to make sense of the exhibition of these two panoramas, one has to understand that which some historians call the "informal empire" or the British imperialist politics of the nineteenth century: the practice of a set of expansionist actions that meant the cultural colonization of countries or colonies with which England maintained business relations, or had interest in doing so. It is called "informal" due to the fact that the imperialist project was not explicit, but masked by purely commercial interests. Luciana de Lima Martins[7] notes that, although Rio de Janeiro had been the headquarters of a naval base of the Royal Navy in South America from 1808 onwards and there was a squad positioned to patrol a zone of interests, the confluence of geopolitical with commercial strategies characterized the "absence of a defined imperialist project" created by the British.

6.      The truth is that as of the nineteenth century the strategic importance of Rio de Janeiro to England started increasing gradually. The city, made capital of Brazil in 1763, had a rapid populational and commercial growth, and remained as the second most important naval center of the Portuguese empire, second only to Lisbon in importance and volume of trade. Moreover, the city port was the ideal place for stopovers and loading: there was drinking water from the mountains surrounding the city, wood from the forests and a variety of provisions such as jerky beef, sugar and tobacco.[8] In the navigation route to southern seas, the city became an almost obligatory stop for ships on their way to India, Australia, Cape Town, and China.

7.      Having said that, we started deconstructing the initial strangeness of the option for a sea view of Rio de Janeiro with few characteristic elements of the city and its nature, contrasting with the most famous panorama of the city, executed by Félix-Emile Taunay and exhibited in 1824 at the rotunda of the Passage des Panorames in Paris. Thought to unveil an urbanized city, balancing between the mountains and the sea, this expanded outlook shown in the French capital obeyed another demonstration of the logic of power: the introduction of the young Brazilian nation, independent from Portugal, and the recognition of Brazil as an independent nation by France.

8.      The British panorama, however, shows the city as a background, quite small when compared to the frigates. Although the Sugar Loaf and Corcovado mountain, albeit tiny, have received some prominence in the composition (with the first one in the center of the first part of the panorama shown in the leaflet), it is clear that the work does not intend to merely present Rio de Janeiro, but to emphasize the presence of ships before the city.

9.      The booklet, which was sold together with the ticket for the exhibition and shows the naval view mentioned above, comprises a historical overview spanning from the discovery of Brazil to its independence in 1822. According to the text, at that time Brazil was “happily overcoming its main difficulties and rising rapidly in distinction and prosperity”[9] – an indication that the country would be fertile ground for business. Printed materials also informed that the drawing was made from the frigate of Lord Cochrane, who had been invited to command the fleet and duly arrived in Guanabara Bay on March 13, 1823.

10.    In addition to some data and much praise, the text is concluded with a list and description of places and natural features that are shown in the view. Some portray the most often cited by travelers of that time (such as the Santa Cruz Fortress, the Sugar Loaf, Botafogo Bay, Gloria, Corcovado mountain) while others are more unusual, such as boats and vessels anchored in the bay (including Lord Cochrane's, according to a comment in the description)[10], and information about the distance between places in town and details about the locations from which they are seen in the picture. Just like Bullock's panorama, which, in order to lead the visitors’ appreciation of the painting reinforces the "aesthetics of visual domination when placing the painted image with references to carefully chosen historical antecedens,"[11] the Rio panorama also directs our eyes, but in a linear way. Everything that must be seen is beyond the line of the ships and the background is shown as something to be conquered by the elements present in the foreground.

11.    According to the author of the brochure, this view of the harbor, one mile from the town, is the best and the most comprehensive that could be obtained, from where it is possible to see the highlands, crowned with monasteries and surrounded by beautiful mountains interspersed with houses and rich and magnificent gardens.[12] It is as if the view from the bay was indeed the ideal one, and this is defended as a way to ensure the best and most real experience for the observer who stands before the enlarged work in the London rotunda.

12.    It is also important to consider that the view from Rio de Janeiro created by the British is part of a tradition of topographical mapping and coastal views prepared by the crew of English and Portuguese vessels. As the visual description was considered superior to any kind of verbal description, and topographical views were used as guides for sailors, the technical training of navigation students placed great emphasis on teaching mapping and drawing, generating the development of a certain visual prowess among members of various levels of the British Royal Navy. There were so many British officers who portrayed Rio de Janeiro as a backdrop for the ships which transported them that future research could be aimed at focusing on a set of previous renditions taken from the deep end of Guanabara Bay[13] which may have inspired the image described in the brochure. Along the same lines, we may say that both the watercolor or engraved views made by sailor travelers and the panorama in Leicester Square played the same role: making the mountainous geographical forms of the "carioca" (native of Rio de Janeiro) coast known to the British public at large, who were eager to "travel" without leaving their cities.

13.    The sites chosen as observation points offer more information about the relationship between landscape and power. In the case of Rio de Janeiro, the view taken from the bay leads back to our explanation about the relationship with the observer's eye playing the role of explorer. The radial view taken from the deep end of the bay does not seek to include the whole (like the view from the Mexican cathedral intends, as we shall see). It flattens the horizon, in order to simplify it for the observer. The background and foreground are rectified and appear at different scales. They are aligned to meet the central spot of the observation deck of the rotunda. It is interesting to note the coincidence between the word "deck" used in this case and the most superficial part of a ship. The shape of the platform of the rotunda is similar to some observation points located on a ship’s  masts. Similarities aside, when placed in upper position, with the line of the panoramic horizon at eye level, the observer in London may feel at the center of the bay and possibly in an anchored vessel. At the same time, the observer becomes aware of being nowhere, since his standpoint does not correspond to any real place.

14.    The 360º view favors the location of the vessels in relation to the mountainous coast, showing the mouth of Guanabara Bay, where it meets the sea, in a reduced size, thereby formally denouncing that the observer is in front of a constructed view. The public to which this panorama was intended was eager for novelties and places to be explored and discovered, which explains the decision for this kind of construction. The intention was not to waste space with unimportant things in the description the image intended to transmit to observers. The main feature is a bay crowded with ships, a contingency space which intermediated communication between Rio de Janeiro and the world, and, moreover, was dominated by the large vessel of Lord Cochrane, highlighted in the left corner of the second sheet of the illustrative brochure.

15.    Similarly, the "flattened" view of the horizon allowed the observer to be in front of a figure always in perspective, when sliding their eyes across to the highest point of observation. The flattening as a technical device for correcting the perspective and marking two distinct planes reaffirms the view of a foreigner, of one traveler facing another. Ascribing observer the condition of a traveller was one of the characteristics of panoramic constructions, considered as real substitutes for travel. The rotundas were not only places for entertainment and education, but portals to different worlds: cities within cities, exotic scenarios or even trips to the past.[14] 

16.    The same condition of a traveller is present in the Mexican panorama. However, different resources are employed. The manipulation of perspective occurs in the traces of the drawing, producing an image that looks as if it were observed through a wide-angle lens. The message is clear: here, from the top of the cathedral, located in the city center, everything can be seen. The idea that the vision can be enlarged according to the observer’s standpoint is enhanced by placing the observer in a symbolic construction of the Spanish domination. The annihilation of the pre-existing Aztec power embodied in the top of the cathedral was communicated to the public through that representation. Even if once again it was known that the view had been constructed and manipulated to fit in one glance, one had the sensation of being the conqueror of that space. Mexico City was presented as a distant place, lush and exotic in its colors, and placed at the feet of the new "conquerors". Bullock's Mexico seems to have been born already panoramic, as if its very nature and topography had made it so.

17.    The standpoint taken from architectural places, usually highlighting construction landmarks, aimed at showing the British public the magnitude of the Spanish heritage in Mexico. This was a very important condition for the success of Mexico City as a trade center; it demonstrated the city had been "domesticated" by the Spaniards and was ready for establishing contact with the British. According to Aguirre, the rational urban space organization in Mexico, shown as similar to European cities, was important to present the nation as a safe place for the British capital.[15] At the same time, alluding subtly both in the picture and in the brochure to the colonial past of conquest, Bullock’s panorama also emphasized the long history of Mexican submission to Europe. Thus, the city was seen as a place of different and overlapping historical periods, including the one of the dominant indigenous culture that lies under the city, which was once colonial and today is modern.

18.    Not only is the spatiality of the two panoramas herein discussed different, but the same applies to temporality: whereas Rio de Janeiro appears as a promise of future to all those who behold it from the bay and from outside the city, Mexico DF appears as a place of accumulation of previous history times: that of the Aztecs, rich and conquered,[16] and that of the Spanish, a dominated and preparatory period for the use which will be possible from then onwards.

19.    Although the Mexican panorama is inserted in a visual tradition inaugurated by classicism, there is something of non-Western tradition that permeates the representation and may be perceived in place names, which carries the pre-Hispanic memory. Even in the Western organization of urban spaces there are references to some architectural and natural landmarks made by Mexicans or inspired by their themes. For example, the cathedral itself is referred to as "built precisely in the space formerly occupied by the great Teocalli del Huitzilo Pochtl"[17], indicating that the most important building, symbol of the Church power and Spanish domination, has superimposed the icon of the Aztec power, the temple dedicated to the main god, Huitzilopochtli. Other Spanish territorial appropriations are indicated in the panorama, as the Calzada de Guadalupe, “en la árida roca de Tepeyacac [...] donde se alzaba antiguamente el templo de la Ceres mexicana, Tonantzin, sítio en donde hoy se yergue la magnífica iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe,”[18] and the Pyramids of San Juan (Teotihuacan), in the background of the first picture panel. These Mexican toponyms contribute to building a sense of modernity, as they represent the domination of the Aztec empire, relating to what has been said about temporality and demonstration of power.

20.    Another noteworthy feature is the lack of buildings in some spaces in the foreground of this panorama. It is exacerbated by the distortion of the façades to be adapted to the "wide-angle" view mentioned before. The trick of highlighting the bare ground, even when sketches are taken from a central and high standpoint, marks the centrality of that place in relation to the city and the country [Figure 3].

21.    When looking at maps made before the nineteenth century, it can be seen that the absence of buildings in the center of the orthogonal plan of the new Hispanic city results from the appropriation of the space of central power that Tenochtlitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire in the post-classical period, had, which can already be seen in the 1524 map attributed to Hernan Cortés, known as the Nuremberg Map [Figure 4]. The succession of maps which show an empty "zócalo" leads to our panorama of the nineteenth century, whose function was to provide the observer with a synthesis of the entire country. This happens due to its centrality, which has been constructed and mastered along the centuries. It is interesting to think that the panorama resumes that which Cortés’s map had done centuries before: taking advantage of the Aztec spatial logic. After all, despite having been executed by Europeans and in accordance with European conventions (houses in perspective, the surrounding cities transfigured into medieval towers and Renaissance domes), there remains a vision of Tenochtitlán as possessing a mythic and cosmic centrality. The planimetric distortion, which places the city at the center of a circular lake (when it was known that in fact there were two lakes, one of freshwater and one of saltwater, connected by a channel) reflects the indigenous understanding of the center of an Empire, as well as being related to the Aztec idea of cyclical time and historical pattern.[19] The European map may have been guided by a pre-Hispanic spatial representation, or the author of the wood engraving work may have based his work on indigenous motifs. It is also necessary to think that this Aztec representation may have helped Spain represent Mexico as a major conquest of the Crown, with indications of urban planning and extra channels being dug appearing on the maps, features that could be understood by King Charles I and the Europeans as signs of civility, thereby highlighting the Spanish ability to subjugate a sophisticated people.

22.    Finally, it should be noted that when we see the two panoramas side by side, we face very different views which cater for different interests, but which are conditioned to a single logic: the informal imperialism. If the rotundas intended to offer the observer the illusion of an overall view, they also placed the observer in a superior position to that of the represented landscape, using psychological tricks such as the height, since the observation deck positioned the eye of an average-height observer at the same level as the horizon. The observer occupied a prominent position and the view suggests that everything that was unveiled before the observer’s was subjected to their domination and control. Thus, the panorama symbolized the relationship between center and periphery, essential to the British Empire. It established a double centrality: the one of the observation deck – both the individual and London as the center of the world – from which it was possible to see everything else. By bringing to this center of the world faraway cities such as Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro – until then unknown to the British public – the impression was created that the Empire knew no bounds.

Bibliographic references

AGUIRRE, Robert. Informal Empire Mexico and Central America in Victorian Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

COSTELOE, Michael. El Panorama de México de Bullock/Burford, 1823-1864: história de una pintura. In: Historia Mexicana, v. 59, n. 4, april/june 2010, pp. 1205-1245.

DELLA DORA, Veronica. Putting the world into a box: a geography of Nineteenth-Century 'traveling landscapes'. Geogr. Ann. 89B (4), p. 287-309.

DESCRIPTION of a view of the City of Mexico, and surrounding country: now exhibiting in the Panorama, Leicester-Square; painted by the proprietor, Robert Burford, from drawings taken in the summer of 1823, brought to this country by Mr. W. Bullock. London: Printed by J. and C. Adlard, Bartholomew Close, 1826. Fonte: The Getty Research Portal. Available at: http://archive.org/details/viewofthecityofmex00burf Accessed on 08/27//2013.

DESCRIPTION of a view of the city of St. Sebastian, and the Bay of Rio Janeiro: now exhibiting in the Panorama, Leicester-Square; painted by the proprietor, Robert Burford, from drawings taken in the year 1823. London: Printed by J. and C. Adlard, 1828. Source: The Getty Research Portal. Available at: http://archive.org/details/gri_000033125008613255 Accessed on 25/02/2014.

MARTINS, Luciana de Lima. O Rio de Janeiro dos navegantes – o olhar britânico (1800-1830). Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2001.

MITCHELL, W. J. T. Landscape and power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

MUNDY, Barbara. Mapping the Aztec Capital: the 1524 Nuremberg Map of Tenochtitlan, Its Sources and Meanings. Imago Mundi. The International Journal for the History of Cartography, v. 50issue 1, 1998, pp. 11-33.

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[1]  Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

[2] The complete title is Description of a view of the city of the City of Mexico, and surrounding country: now exhibiting in the Panorama, Leicester-Square; painted by the proprietor, Robert Burford, from drawings taken in the summer of 1823, brought to this country by Mr. W. Bullock. Both panoramas mentioned in this text are named after the titles of the brochures that accompanied their exhibition in the London rotunda. These brochures are evidence of the tracing of the drawings which survived until the present days as none of the monumental round pictures exists anymore.

[3] AGUIRRE, Robert. Informal Empire – Mexico and Central America in Victorian Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005, p. 43.

[4] MITCHELL, W. J. T. Landscape and power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002, p. 2.

[5] AGUIRRE, Op. cit., p. 44.

[6] COSTELOE, Michael. El Panorama de México de Bullock/Burford, 1823-1864: história de una pintura. In: Historia Mexicana, v. 59, n. 4, April/June 2010, p. 1208.

[7] MARTINS, Luciana de Lima. O Rio de Janeiro dos navegantes – o olhar britânico (1800-1830). Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2001, p.71.

[8] Ibidem, p. 70.

[9] Description of a view of the city of St. Sebastian, and the Bay of Rio Janeiro []. London: Printed by J. and C. Adlard, 1828, p. 6

[10] "At about the same time this view was taken, and His Lordship's vessel, along with other ships that made up the Brazilian Navy, are represented in various parts of the bay." Description of a view of the city of St. Sebastian, and the Bay of Rio Janeiro […], Op. cit., p. 9.

[11] AGUIRRE, Op. cit., p. 43.

[12] Description of a view of the city of St. Sebastian, and the Bay of Rio Janeiro […], Op. cit.,p. 6.

[13] According to Luciana de Lima Martins (Op. cit., p. 96) at least Harry Edmund Egdell, George Lothian Hall, Owen Stanley, Samuel Hood Inglefield and James Glen Wilson did it.

[14] DELLA DORA, Veronica. Putting the world into a box: a geography of Nineteenth- Century 'traveling landscapes'. Geogr. Ann. 89B (4), p. 296.

[15] AGUIRRE, Op. cit., p. 44.

[16] The brochure text starts with the statement that the Mexico City would be "the oldest known city in America […], the splendid and little known city of Tenochtitlan," alluding to a magnificent and important historical past. (Description of a view of the city of the City of Mexico, Op. cit., p. 2)

[17] Description of a view of the city of the City of Mexico, Op. cit., p. 30.

[18] Ibidem, p. 31.

[19] MUNDY, Barbara. Mapping the Aztec Capital: the 1524 Nuremberg Map of Tenochtitlan, Its Sources and Meanings. Imago Mundi, The International Journal for the History of Cartography, v. 50issue 1, 1998, p. 11-33.