Romantic Circles

In this view of parts of Cheshire and Lancashire, as if seen from the car of a balloon sailing far above them, the familiar has become strange. In contrast to more conventional prospects, we are looking down at the earth rather than out to the horizon; and from this perspective the view comprises four, relatively flat, horizontal layers, all lying parallel to the surface of the page. The first layer, lying some distance below the balloon, is marked by numerous white-and-grey clouds, of various sizes and shapes, that reach up towards us, as if they were the tops of wooly, floating mountains. They seem playfully to frame and reframe the surface of the earth far below. Clustering near them are patches of deep blue, a representation perhaps of "the blue Fields of Air" described by Baldwin (147). In contrast to the buoyant forms of the clouds, the earth seems to have been flattened. Its once striking features—hills, cliffs, trees, forests, villages, churches, and so on—are now little more than abstract patterns on a mottled, dark-green canvas. As Baldwin remarks in astonishment, "Helsbye-Hill, tho' upwards of 600 feet high, appeared from the car of the balloon, to be on the same level with the grounds below"; and, writing of Chester, "The Whole had a beautiful and rich Look; not like a Model, but a coloured Map" (Airopaidia 78, 43). The only terrestrial element to avoid this fate are the rivers, which seem to occupy an intermediate zone, midway between the layers of earth and cloud. In Sketches and Hints Humphry Repton notes that because water reflects light "like a mirror," bodies of water often seem closer to us than they are in reality (Repton 33). Perhaps to simulate this effect, the rivers in this prospect (which, Baldwin reports, when viewed above appear to be coloured red (Airopaidia 41-2, 106-7, 147, 173-4)) have been painted a light pink, which seems to raise them above the heavy dark-green canvas, as if they were claiming kinship with the clouds. These remarkable forms reach across the flattened landscape in long serpentine lines, almost as if they were living members of the prospect. Their "Doublings," as Baldwin notes, are "so various and fantastic as to exceed the Limits of Credibility" (144). On occasion they seem even to reach up over the edge of the clouds before plunging through them back to the earth below. And although this optical illusion can easily be explained—a cloud is thinnest and therefore most transparent on its margins; we are really seeing through the cloud to the river below—the visual effect is nevertheless striking. The fourth layer is akin to a transparent sheet, placed somewhere between Baldwin and the layer of clouds beneath him, on which the wandering path of the balloon, represented by a continuous black line, has been inscribed. Blown by the wind, its meandering path variously recalls the serpentine tracks of the rivers and the wooly outlines of the clouds. Rather than standing safely outside this aerial prospect, the artist is immersed within it, completing our picture of a scene formed, and then reformed again and again, by the constantly changing relations between earth/water, cloud/air, light, and moving-observer. This transparency is supplemented by an "Explanatory Print," placed alongside "A Balloon Prospect" in Airopaidia, which functions as if it were a second transparency, intended to be placed over the design as a whole. Where the first transparency tracks Baldwin's movements inside a constantly-changing visual environment; the second locates the same movements, and the aerial places he explores, in relation to a more familiar environment, glimpsed only on the outskirts of the first, which is conjured by the names Chester, Helsbye, Frodsham Bridge, Rixton Moss, the River Mersey, and so on. This complex visual ensemble is completed with Baldwin's instructions about how viewer and picture ought to be positioned in relation to each other, and with his suggestion of an alternate frame for the design:

N.B. The Circular View is seen to the best Advantage, when placed flat on a Table or Chair, and rather in the Shade: the Eye looking directly down upon the Picture.

Whoever will be at the Trouble of viewing distinct Parts of the Balloon-Prospect, throu' a very small Opening, made by rolling a Sheet of Paper into the Form of a hollow Tube, and applying it close to either Eye, at the same Time shutting the other . . . may form a very accurate Idea of the Manner, in which the Prospect below was represented gradually in Succession, to the Aironaut; whose Sight was bounded by a circularity of Vapour . . . (Airopaidia V)