Description of A View of the City of Jerusalem and the Surrounding Country,: now exhibiting at The Panorama, Broadway, corner of Prince and Mercer Streets,

[JUDAICA]. CATHERWOOD , F[rederick], Architect. [BURFORD, Robert, Painter]. Description of A View of the City of Jerusalem and the Surrounding Country, now exhibiting at The Panorama, Broadway, corner of Prince and Mercer Streets, New York. Painted by Robert Burford, from drawings taken in 1834, by F[rederick] Catherwood, Architect. 8vo, original printed wrappers (two edges tattered), folding frontispiece panorama (with key to 71 locations in Jerusalem), pp. 12, newly stitched. [New York: Printed by William Osborn, 1838 (imprint from front cover)].

The rare first New York Edition, rarer still in printed wrappers. First edition of the description of the panorama as exhibited by Frederick Catherwood himself at The Broadway Panorama (the "Catherwood Panorama," or the "Catherwood Rotunda," a 10,000 sq. ft. building designed by Catherwood to exhibit panoramic paintings and a collection of Mexican antiquities in New York City between 1838 and 1842. It was one of the most popular entertainment spots in early New York City. The seventy-one sights marked on the panorama's key are all described in detail. Catherwood's panoramas were one of the last, popular stationary panoramas in the United States. "Catherwood was a well known architect, illustrator and explorer, who had provided the sketches for Robert Burford's circular panorama of Jerusalem (1835), exhibited later in Catherwood's own rotunda in New York (1838)."-Erkki Huhtamo, Illusions in Motion: Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles (2013), p. 171. Born in London in 1799, Catherwood arrived in New York in 1836, already a well-traveled man, having recently completed most of six years on a second tour of Egypt and the Levant. He had worked for Robert Buford at his panorama in Leicester Square, London, where he learned the business of popular entertainament. In between trips to Central America with John Lloyd Stephens, he went back into the entertainment business, opening his own panorama at Prince and Mercer Streets. Burford exhibited the panorma in London (1835 & 1836), and Edinburgh (1836). Catherwood purchased "Jerusalem" from Burford, and brought it to this country, exhibiting it in Boston (1837), New York (1838), and Philadelphia (1840). "Jerusalem" was the inaugural showing at his New York rotunda. It consists of two wide views, one facing north the other south. The painting perished with all of Catherwood's other work when his uninsured New York rotunda burned down July 31, 1842. The only copy of this printing at auction that we are aware of was sold for $1250.00 all in, at Kedem Auction House Ltd., Jersusalem, Auction 68, Jewish and Israeli History and Culture, September 19, 2019, described by Kedem as without wrappers, with stains, plate reinforced with tape, leaves detached. No copies of any printing listed online as of this writing (10/25/21). We have found copies of two non-New York printings sold at auction, one in 1915 (London, 1835), the other in 2020 (Boston (1837), both lacking printed wrappers. Short repaired tear in panorama, with no loss. See ODNB for Catherwood, and mentions of his panorama. OCLC locates four copies of this 1838 printing, three of which we have identified as being in wrappers (AAS; Huntington; NYHS), and a fourth which is actually from 1839, not 1838 (New Hampshire State Library). American Imprints 49507 is inaccurate. It adds NYPL (with wrappers); DLC (without wrappers); and two apparent ghosts (Conn. Historical Soc., and Library Company of Philadelphia, which lists other printings but not this one). See, Romantic Circles online for considerable information about Catherwood's panoramas. Ralph Hyde, Panoramania! #51 describes a Philadelphia exhibition pamphlet. Very good, with minor chipping at edges.