Charles-Marie Bouton

1781 – 1853

French painter. He was a student of Jacques Louis David, Jean-Victor Bertin and the first French panorama painter Pierre Prévost (1764-1823). He concentrated mostly on the perspective and the art of distributing light. In 1821-22, he developed the Diorama theatre with Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851), the inventor of the daguerreotype process of photography, and a professional scene painter for the theatre. Between 1822 and 1839 they were co-proprietors of the Diorama in Paris, an auditorium in which they displayed immense paintings of famous places and historical events. This scenographic entertainment included two enormous canvases, 14 by 22 metres in size, typically with one featuring a natural view and the other an architectural view, illuminated by moving, coloured lights. As a painter, he reproduced interiors of French churches such as the church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont in Paris, and the cathedral of Chartres.

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