The contemporary spectator described a ‘shiver running down his spine’ upon entering the panorama rotunda, witnessing the reality of the depicted scene.

Vanessa Schwartz points out in her study of early mass culture that the panorama's immersiveness "lay not so much in the actual quality of the panorama's realistic representation of a particular place (for few in the audience would have stood before the actual site and therefore could judge the quality of the copy) as in its technological illusionism."

Vanessa R. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siecle France. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p.153.

According to Richard Altick, the panoramic experience “was so designed that two of the forces which militate against perfect illusion in a gallery painting — the limiting frame and standards of size and distance external to the picture itself — were eliminated… The intrusive elements of the spectator’s surroundings being blacked out, the world in which they were entwined consisted exclusively of the landscape or cityscape depicted on the canvas suspended thirty feet away.”

(Richard Altick, The Shows of London [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978], p.132-3).

Since achieving the ‘wow’ effect was the primary goal of the panorama, it was judged inferior to fine arts, although the panorama undoubtedly played an influential role in the subject matter and scale of landscape painters of the 18th century.

– Framed article:

Cyclorama and illusionism in entertainment

The 1899 dramatisation of the novel Ben Hur was a Broadway smash hit. The main spectacle was the use of a live chariot race using real horses and real chariots set against a cyclorama. It ran for 21 years, and was seen by over 20 million people. The Era's drama critic detailed how it was achieved by ‘four great cradles, 20ft in length and 14ft wide, which are movable back and front on railways’. The horses galloped full-pelt towards the audience, secured by invisible steel cable traces and running on treadmills. Electric rubber rollers spun the chariot wheels. A vast cyclorama backdrop revolved in the opposite direction to create an illusion of massive speed, and fans created clouds of dust. The critic for The Illustrated London News described it as ‘a marvel of stage-illusion’ that was ‘memorable beyond all else’. The Sketch's critic called it ‘thrilling and realistic ... enough to make the fortune of any play’ and noted that ‘the stage, which has to bear 30 tons' weight of chariots and horses, besides huge crowds, has had to be expressly strengthened and shored up’. It went on to inspire the multi-oscar winning 1959 film adaptation of Ben Hur, starring Charlton Heston - featuring the key live chariot race of course. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclorama)