Robert Barker's Paradoxical Spectatorship

The Paradoxical Spectatorship in Robert Barker’s Panorama the View of Edinburgh and the Surrounding Country from the Calton Hill (1789-1791)

Mass Audience: Scottish and English Publics as the Targeted Spectators

Not only does Barker’s panorama painting of Edinburgh strategically choose its subject matter and site of exhibition to demonstrate a contradictory victor’s narrative of defeat, but also it creates a paradoxical spectatorship between the two groups of audiences in London, the Londoners and the Scottish people.
For the Londoners, given the cost, risks and hardship of travelling in the late 18th century---it took fourteen days by coach from London to Edinburgh, thus most of Barker’s London spectators would never have visited the Scottish
city (Kincaid 109). Therefore, by presenting a prosperous and progressive picture of the defeated country, Barker’s panorama could be used as British Empire’s instrument to foster national pride in British achievements among the Londoners (Oleksijczuk 65).
For the Scottish spectators in London, in dealing with their nostalgia for home country, Barker’s panorama painting offers a whole new perspective of viewing the Scottish land. From the wide clean new boulevard, to the people busy riding carriages on the road for commercial trades; from the fertile farmland that stretches for miles, to the steamy glass factories and the boats that were about to depart the port, what the Scottish spectators had witnessed was a romanticized version of their past that was lost in defeat (Koselleck 312).
Together, Robert Barker’s panorama attempted to recollect and reinterpret the narrative of the defeated from a perspective of the victor, and it can be seen as a pedagogical and sensuous process for both the British and Scottish publics.
By situating people of oppositional national sentiments within a single overwhelming display of the Union’s victory, Barker’s panorama painting intentionally blurs the boundary between nations, and forge a “collective memory” that can be shared among different cultural groups (Oleksijczuk 45). Furthermore, such shared imaginary helps define a culture, a culture that was born out of British national pride and Scotland’s incorporation within the
union.
Spatial Strategy: Panorama as a Perceptual Domination Machine Besides the intentionally selected subject matter and the targeted spectators, Robert Barker’s panorama was also famous for its features of enhanced-realism, multi-perspectivalism and elevated, central vantage point, which together contributed to an effect of spatial and temporal disjunctions on the spectators, making the spectators feel as if they are in two places at once (Oleksijczuk 2). Structurally speaking, Barker had designed three technical components so that the panorama could give the spectators the realistic impression that they were situated on an elevated viewpoint overlooking the countryside: an observation platform to avoid viewers from getting too close to the surface of the painting; a roofing component to hide the picture’s top edge; and skylights installed directly above the picture, bathing it in natural light while leaving the central platform in relative darkness (Barker 166 ). Such design created a circular and enclosed central view space for the spectators, which could be perceptually immersive. According to Charles Robert Leslie, one of the English visitors to Baker’s panorama, “ They are so well painted as to be quite deception. As they extend in a circular form all round the rooms and the spectators and placed in the centre the effect is very astonishing. I actually put on my hat imagining myself to be in the open air.” This sense of dislocation, coupled with the sheer sense of physical centrality in relation to the scene (Oleksijczuk 3), encouraged spectators to see themselves as participants in the endless linkages and networks being constructed between the defeated nation and the Union, between the Jacobites and the Hanoverian, between the metropolis and the wider world. Therefore, by perceptually dominating and controlling the spectators’ senses, Barker’s panorama was able to psychologically transport the British and Scottish spectators in London to the portrayed Edinburgh scene without being limited by the time, space or even the nationality, everything the spectators witnessed was a shared entirety cultivated under the Union. Furthermore, the way that Barker presented the panorama to the public also gives an education purpose to his invention.
To introduce spectators to the painting, Robert and his son Henry Aston Barker provided keys and gave lectures to successive groups of spectators gathered on the observation platform, which is limit to a group of seven at one time (Oleksijczuk 3). The aim of only allowing a small group of spectators at an elevated view point in the center of the panorama painting is to ensure that every spectator could be immersed in the illusionistic scene, both physically and mentally, despite the constraints set by time and
space.
Conclusion
In summary, in Robert Barker’s panorama the View of Edinburgh and the Surrounding Country from the Calton Hill (1789-1791), Edinburgh with the development of its New Town was portrayed as a sign of the economic benefits of the 1707 Union, and of Scottish allegiance to George III; Scottish and English publics were seen as the targeted spectators, whose sense of space and time was dominated by the circular form and elevated view point of the panorama, so that all spectators would be convinced that Scotland and England is a social political unity with a shared culture. Such culture gained its birth from a totalizing political approach that attempted to legitimately add Scotland to England to form a coherent whole, a superpower that would merge the discourses of difference and help bring about British nationalism (Oleksijczuk 25).
The paradoxical spectatorship in Barker’s panorama permitted a victor’s interpretation of the history of the defeated, which not only demonstrated how British imperialism had influenced the culture of defeat, but also helped to establish British national identity among nations. By embracing the modernity of the victors, and romanticizing the past of the defeat, the panorama’s form and subject matter strategically solicit the active participation od its spectators in ways that helped naturalize Britain’s imperialist goals.