Transporting the Wounded
Fragment from the panorama The Battle of Rezonville, August 16, 1870

Transporting the Wounded is a cut fragment of a canvas that originally measured about 106 metres in length by 6 metres in height and titled The Battle of Rezonville: it depicted an episode in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. The panorama, commissioned in 1880 by a Belgian company from French painters Édouard Detaille and Alphonse Deneuville, was completed in 1883 and exhibited in Vienna until 1887. Panoramas such as this were installed in specially built rotundas and attracted large crowds. As admission was restricted to paying patrons, these attractions represented an extremely lucrative operation for the sponsoring companies. Instead of being destroyed, as was usually the case at the end of a prolonged exhibition tour, this canvas was cut up into 115 fragments that were then sold separately.