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Scenery, Curiosities, And Stupendous Rocks: William Quesenburys Overland Sketches, 18501851,Used
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Long before Hollywood brought the landscapes of the American West to movie screens, clever impresarios invented ways of simulating the experience of western travel and selling it to mass audiences. In 1851, entrepreneur John Wesley Jones hired artist William Quesenbury to join such a venture. Quesenbury and other artists traveled the overland trails through Nebraska Territory to sketch the scenery, curiosities, and stupendous rocks they encountered, and Jones used selected material for his Pantoscope, a gigantic, scrolling panoramic painting. Scenery, Curiosities, and Stupendous Rocks gathers 71 of Quesenburys sketches from the Jones expedition and a gold rush trip the year before. These works in pencil are illuminated by eyewitness accounts from the period, modern maps, contemporary photographs, and descriptive notes.David Royce Murphy, Michael L. Tate, and Michael Farrell set Quesenburys depictions, including Pikes Peak and Courthouse Rock, in historical context. Their insightful essays offer accounts of the artists midcentury travels, the worlds of panoramic art and field exploration, and the contemporary conception of natural space. In exploring these topics, the book offers alternate conclusions about the purpose of the sketches. Joness moving panorama opened in late 1852 under the title Pantoscope of California, Nebraska & Kansas, Salt Lake & the Mormons and was wildly popular on Boston and New York stages. Today, the Quesenbury sketches are all that remains of Joness project. The sketches reproduced here, rare records of that ambitious enterprise as well as the sights en route to California gold, offer evidence of the way midnineteenthcentury Americans envisioned the West.
⚠️ WARNING (California Proposition 65):
This product may contain chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.
For more information, please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov.