John Banvard's Mississippi River Panorama: Cut into Pieces

The work above is another of Banvard's paintings.

John Banvard was an American panorama and portrait painter. Banvard's magnum opus was a huge panorama of the Mississippi River Valley. In 1840, the artist spent months traveling up and down the river in a boat, sketching the scenery. He then transferred the sketches to an enormous canvas. 

The finished work measured twelve feet high by a mile and a half long. The massive panorama was advertised as the "three-mile canvas," (a slight exaggeration), and was brought on a tour of the entire United States. Towards the end of the 19th century, the panorama was cut into several pieces for storage, and the pieces have never been recovered. (Link | Photo)