Artist. As a young man he made attempts at painting moving panoramas. A panorama was a circular art work that surrounded the viewer. In the spring of 1842 he bought a boat and provisions and set sail on the Mississippi River. His goal was to sketch the river from St. Louis all the way to New orleans. For the next two years he would fill his days gliding down the river, filling his sketch pads with river views.He was living in Louisville, Kentucky in 1844 when he decided to create the largest painting the world had ever known.He was going to paint the Mississippi River. He called it his three mile painting. He built a barn on the outskirts of louisville to house the huge bolts of canvas that he had custom ordered. He had to devise a tracked system of grommets to keep the huge panorama canvas from sagging.The system was ingenious enough to be patented and featured in a Scientific American article a few years later.For two years he worked on the three Mile Painting. He opened the show on June 29, 1846 and not a single person came. The next day he went to the docks and gave free tickets to the crews of the riverboats for a special afternoon performance. When the crews got back to their boats they told the passengers and that night he made $10.00 which was a great night's work in 1846.As the show grew in popularity, he added more sections to the painting and moved to a larger venue. The show was over two hours in length. Each show was also unique. He would wind the painting one way for one show and the opposite way for the next, so you would either see an upriver or downriver journey.He moved his show to Boston where he played his panorama to 251,702 customers in six months.He then moved the show to new york city. He next went to London.On April 11,1849 he was summoned to Windsor Castle for a special performance before Queen Victoria.In twenty months his shows in london drew over 700,000 customers He was now an extremely wealthy man. When he returned to the United States in 1852 he bought a 60 acre lot on Long island and proceeded to build a replica of windsor castle. He named the castle Glenada in honor of his daughter Ada.He now decided to open a museum to highlight artifacts he had collected on his many travels. He financed his museum by floating a stock offering worth $300,000.00. In lieu of cash he paid contractors and artisans with shares of the stock. He had never registered his business or its stock with the state of new york. No share certificates existed for the stock. The stock was worthless.His museum opened on June 17, 1867, in direct competition with a museum run by showman p.t. barnum. But barnum was so good at advertising that he could not compete with him. On September 1, 1867 his museum closed. By 1883 after years of teetering on bankruptcy he sold his castle and moved to south dakota. Some of his paintings are in the robinson museum in pierre and some in the Kampeska Heritage Museum in watertown,but most are lost. He was buried in a paupers grave in the frontier town of Watertown, South Dakota. His story is one of the stories featured in the book "Banvard's Folly" by Paul Collins