A print of a bird's eye view of the shoreline of Texas and Mexico, with the land in shades of green and yellow and small black boats in the light blue Gulf of Mexico.

Panorama of the Seat of War. Birds Eye View of Texas and Part of Mexico

John Bachmann (active 1849-1885)

Date

1861
Object Type

Prints
Medium

Toned lithograph
Contributors

Published by John Bachmann
Dimensions

Image: 18 9/16 x 28 7/16 in.
Sheet: 23 9/16 x 32 3/8 in.
Inscriptions

Recto:
u.c.: Panorama of the Seat of War.
l.l.: Drawn from Nature and Lith by John Bachmann
l.c.: Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1861 by John Bachmann in the Clerks Office of the District Court of the U.S. for the Southern District of New York. \ BIRDS EYE VIEW \ OF TEXAS AND PART OF MEXICO \ John Bachmann, Publisher, \ 115 & 117 Nassau St. New York.
l.r. in graphite: $150
Credit Line

Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Accession Number

1970.61
Copyright

Public domain

Bachmann, a German-born lithographer, is credited with coining the term “bird’s-eye view.” Working out of his New York studio, he published prints showing cities from an elevated viewpoint hundreds of feet in the air, as if from the perspective of a soaring bird. When the Civil War began in 1861, he published his most ambitious project to date: a series of seven such views of the Atlantic Coast.

Meant to be displayed side by side, the prints combine to form an unbroken view of the U.S. coastline running from the southern tip of Texas to the north past Washington, DC. This panoramic view results in some topographic distortion, but it offered Northerners, particularly those who lacked the skills to read conventional maps, a new way of tracking and making sense of the conflict.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023).

Location: Off view

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