BRUNSWICK
On Monday, Sept. 14, Pejepscot Historical will present a talk and book signing by Jessica Skwire Routhier on the 1851 panoramic painting of Pilgrim’s Progress. The talk will be at 7 p.m. at Curtis Memorial Library’s Morrell Meeting Room. An admission charge of $5 benefits Pejepscot Historical Society.
Routhier is co-author of “The Painters’ Panorama: Narrative, Art, and Faith in the Moving Panorama of Pilgrim’s Progress.” “The Moving Panorama of Pilgrim’s Progress” is an extraordinary 8-foot by 800-foot painting that was created in 1851 and thought lost for a full century. Rediscovered in 1996 and fully restored in 2012, it illustrates John Bunyan’s iconic book, “The Pilgrim’s Progress.”
Moving panoramas were a mid-19th-century precursor to the motion picture, massive canvases that were scrolled across a stage and accompanied by a lecturer and music. One of only a handful that survive today, the “Moving Panorama of Pilgrim’s Progress” was one of the most important and popular moving panoramas of its day, with designs by rising luminaries of the Hudson River School of American landscape painting: Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Cropsey, Daniel Huntington, and others.
Jessica Skwire Routhier helped manage the preservation and interpretation of the panorama during her tenure as director of Maine’s Saco Museum, where the panorama was displayed in 2012. She will detail the history of the panorama and sign copies of the book in which she and coauthors Kevin J. Avery and Thomas Hardiman, Jr. documented its story. Books will be available for purchase at the event.
For further details, please visit www.pejepscothistorical.org or call (207) 729-6606.
About the Pejepscot Historical Society: The Pejepscot Historical Society is a private, non-profit, educational organization charged with preserving the collective heritage of Brunswick, Harpswell, and Topsham. The Society owns and operates the Joshua L. Chamberlain House Museum and the Skolfield-Whittier House, both of which are open until October 11 for the 2015 season. For further information please call the Society at (207) 729.6606 or find us at www.pejepscothistorical.org.
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