A Life of Frontier Landscapes and Moving Panoramas
Henry Lewis was a British-born, self-taught American artist and showman who became best known for his paintings of the American West. Born in 1819, his early life involved an apprenticeship as a carpenter in Boston, Massachusetts, before he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, at age seventeen. There, he worked as a carpenter and scenery painter at the St. Louis Theatre. Between 1846 and 1848, Lewis captured hundreds of scenes of the Mississippi River through sketches and paintings, documenting rare views such as the Mormon Temple at Nauvoo, Illinois, and the great St. Louis Fire of 1849.
Lewis transformed his sketches into a massive moving panorama, a work measuring 12 feet by 1,325 feet. This exhibition, titled Lewis Mammoth Panorama of the Mississippi (Great National Work), was unrolled before audiences in the United States and Europe, accompanied by music and narration. During his tour of America, Lewis narrated the exhibition, which included special effects to depict the devastating St. Louis fire of 1849.
The European Years and Artistic Legacy
In 1853, while touring his panorama in Düsseldorf, Germany, Lewis decided to resettle in the city. He achieved modest success as an artist and worked for the U.S. consulate. In 1857, he published a book containing 80 illustrations based on his panorama, titled Das Illustirte Mississippithal. This work was an attempt at an English edition titled The Illustrated Mississippi: From the Falls of St. Anthony to the Gulf of Mexico, though the English version was never completed.
The original panorama was sold to another exhibitor in 1857 for a planned exhibition in Calcutta, India, but it has since been lost. Lewis remained in Germany for the rest of his life, returning to America only once to visit family and friends in Iowa and Missouri. He died in Düsseldorf in 1904.
