The Diorama, Regent's Park, London, was a specialised theatre built in 1823 to show large, dramatized tableaux paintings as entertainment.
Origins in London
Dioramas were perspective painted scenes dramatized with lighting and other effects that were a precursor of the cinema. Their genesis in London was devised by the painter Philippe de Loutherbourg and set up in Lisle Street, Soho, in 1781. It consisted of a 10 ft wide box within which a series of moving and mechanically operated scenes, such as a storm at sea, were displayed. Earlier, non-moving, forerunners were the panoramas and the peepshows of the streets and fairgrounds as depicted by William Hogarth in his engraving of Southwark Fair. From 1820 the Cosmorama (from the Greek words kosmos and orama, meaning "world" and "scene") in St James's Street, Mayfair and later Regent Street became a fashionable meeting place. It featured fourteen peepholes onto perspective scenes using large convex lenses, mirrors and special lighting to create scenic effects. Then, in Paris in 1822, Charles-Marie Bouton (1781– 1853), a Troubador painter, and Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851), a skilful painter of trompe-l'œil and later inventor of the first practical form of photography, produced their remarkable Dioramas (from the Greek words dia and orama, meaning "through" and "scene"). They followed up their Paris success with Dioramas in Berlin and London in 1823.
The Regent's Park Diorama
In the 1820s London was experiencing a building boom and John Nash's grand plan for Regent's Park and its fashionable terraces was well underway. The site chosen for London's Diorama was in the south-east of the Park, behind the Park Square East terrace with its public entrance in the centre of the façade at no. 18. The plots on either side, numbers 17 & 19, were also allocated and were built as part of the development as private houses. James Arrowsmith, brother-in-law of Louis Daguerre, commissioned the architect Augustus Charles Pugin, who was working for Nash at the time, and the builder Jacob Smith to design and build a Diorama during the summer of 1823. Daguerre initially ran it in partnership with Bouton, after which it was managed by his protégé, the painter Charles-Caïus Renoux.
The audience of up to 200 sat thirty to forty feet from the canvases in a dark circular "saloon" at the centre of the building which was "tastefully decorated, and fitted up with boxes and a pit". The saloon was rotated through 73 degrees by an arrangement of wheels beneath its timber frame so that the two huge painted scenes could be displayed alternately in the two "picture rooms". The proscenium arches, which were 24 feet (7.3m) wide by 21 feet (6.4m) high were alternately exposed, so while one was open to the audience, the other was closed by the shell of the auditorium wall and could be rearranged for the next display. The machinery, designed by James Morgan and built by an engineer called Topham, was so well poised that the whole auditorium could be turned by a single man. Usually one of the two scenes was a landscape and the other was landmark building, each hand-painted on calico, which was made transparent in selected areas.
A corridor with black walls behind the proscenium arches led to the stage, near the back of which was hung the main picture. The paintings, which could be rolled up on huge cylinders, measured 72 ft (22m) wide by 40 ft (12m) high and were painted with translucent and opaque colours. Behind the painting rose tall windows to naturally light the translucent areas while the opaque areas were lit from directional skylights in the roof of the dark corridor. The lighting effects could be modified, with dramatic effects, by an elaborate system of shutters pulled by cords, some being made of coloured fabric which could overlay one another as required, so that almost limitless mixtures of colours and lighting could be achieved. Solid objects were often placed in front of the painting to heighten the realism. Daylight only was used so that foggy days marred performances. Each spectacle was shown for 10-I5 minutes before the auditorium was rotated to show the other tableau.
The London Diorama opened on 29 September 1823 with paintings from Messrs Daguerre and Bouton's Paris Diorama depicting the Interior of Canterbury Cathedral and the Valley of the Sarnen. It proved an immediate success and Bouton remained behind in England to run the new establishment.