Jean-Charles Langlois's Panorama of Algiers (1833) and the Prospective Colonial Landscape

This article considers one of the first representations of colonial Algeria, Jean-Charles Langlois's Panorama of Algiers of 1833. It examines studies and sketches made by Langlois in Algiers, resulting from his participation in the conquest in 1830 and a later visit in 1832 in preparation for the now-destroyed panorama. Consideration of the responses of contemporary French writers illuminates their distinctions between paintings and panoramas. In arguing that the specific perceptual mechanism of the panorama assisted fantasies of domination that helped to shape France's colonial mission, this article argues that the relationship between viewer and spectacle posited by the Panorama of Algiers serves as a prototype for the representation of colonial landscape in nineteenth-century France.