In 1879, the National Panorama Company, led by Charles Louis Willoughby and supported by Marshall Field, Judge Treat, Jefferson Printing Company and an assortment of other capitalists commissioned the artist Paul Dominique Philippoteaux to begin works on a cyclorama of the Battle of Gettysburg. Preparation began in 1880 and by 1883 the National Panorama Company had taken possession of the monumental cyclorama painting which became known as the Gettysburg Cyclorama, Chicago version (so-named for the city in which it was first exhibited).