| Method | Woodcut |
| Artist | [Anonymous] |
| Published | Supplement to the Illustrated London News, August 2, 1851. |
| Dimensions | Image 232 x 915 mm, Sheet 388 x 972 mm |
| Notes |
A large scale panorama of the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park during the Great Exhibition in 1851. The scene shows the Crystal Palace dominating the view, large numbers of people are in the foreground visiting the Great Exhibition including families with children. The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations or The Great Exhibition, was an international exhibition that took place in Hyde Park, London, from 1 May to 15 October 1851. It was the first in a series of World Fair exhibitions of culture and industry that became popular in the nineteenth-century. Organized by Prince Albert, Henry Cole, Francis Henry, George Wallis, Charles Dilke and other members of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, the aim of the exhibition was the celebration of modern industrial technology and design from around the world, and the promotion of Britain as leader of the field. Prince Albert was an enthusiastic promoter of the self-financing exhibition and persuaded the government to form the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. The Crystal Palace, a cast-iron and plate-glass building was commissioned specifically to house the exhibits. Designed by Joseph Paxton with support from structural engineer Charles Fox, it was erected in just nine months. Six million people, equivalent to a third of the entire population of Britain at the time, visited the exhibition, with the resulting profits being used to found the Museum of Manufactures (now the Victoria and Albert Museum), the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum. Exhibits came from all over the world, from expanding imperial colonies, such as Australia, India and New Zealand, and foreign countries, such as Denmark, France and Switzerland. Numbering 13,000 in total exhibits included the Koh-i-Noor, the world's biggest diamond, the recently-discovered 8th-century Tara Brooch, Frederick Bakewell's precursor to the fax machine, prize-winning daguerreotypes by Matthew Brady, the first iron-framed piano to be produced in Europe, the prototype for the 1851 Colt Navy revolver, a leech-operated barometer, and gold and silver ornaments made by the Khudabadi Sindhi Swarankar from Sindh. The Illustrated London News was a popular weekly magazine, initiated by Herbert Ingram in 1842 as the world's first illustrated news magazine. The ILN's artistic output was prodigious, resulting in thousands of woodcut illustrations over its lifetime, and securing its position as one of the two most successful and enduring publications of its kind throughout the Victorian era, alongside its main competitor The Graphic, which was established in 1869. Condition: Laid to linen. Four vertical folds as issued. Foxing to sheet. Toning to sheet edges. |
| Framing | unmounted |
| Price | £250.00 |
| Stock ID | 53313 |