John Rowson Smith

He was born in 1810 in Boston, Massachusetts. Most of his childhood was spent in Brooklyn before he moved to Philadelphia in 1830. He was taught painting by his father John Rubens Smith. His grandfather was the British painter and mezzotinter John Raphael Smith. ==Career==

, by John Rowson Smith engraved by his father Smith began as a scenery painter for the National Theater in Philadelphia. He also painted theatrical scenery in Boston, New Orleans, New York, and St. Louis. He was a pioneer in the creation of moving panoramas and produced the Leviathan Panorama of the Mississippi River which covered 20,000 square feet of canvas and depicted approximately 2,000 miles of landscape along the river across nine states. The panorama was divided into three parts: the "Corn Region" depicted the head of the river to the Ohio River; the "Cotton Region" depicted from the Ohio River to Natchez, Mississippi; and the "Sugar Region" depicted from Natchez to the Gulf of Mexico. The moving panorama was displayed in Troy, New York, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1848 and then throughout major cities in Europe from 1849 to 1852. however other rivaling panoramas of the Mississippi were created by John Banvard, Henry Lewis, Leon D. Pomerede and Samuel B. Stockwell. None of these works, including Smith's, survived to the current day. He returned to theatrical scenery painting and died in Philadelphia in 1864. ==References==

• McDermott, John Francis, The Lost Panoramas of the Mississippi, University of Chicago Press, 1958