The Horse in Motion: “Sallie Gardner,” owned by Leland Stanford; ridden by G. Domm, running at a 1:40 gait over the Palo Alto track

Artist Eadweard Muybridge (American, born England, 1830 - 1904)

DateJune 19, 1878

MediumAlbumen print

DimensionsImage and sheet: 4 1/8 × 7 7/8 inches (10.48 × 20 cm)
Mount: 4 1/4 × 8 1/2 inches (10.8 × 21.59 cm)

Credit LineGift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.

Object number2005.27.369

SignedOn mount recto, lower left, in black type: "Copyright, 1878, by MUYBRIDGE"; On mount recto, lower right, in black type: "MORESE'S Gallery, 417 Montgomery St., San Francisco".

InscribedOn mount recto, bottom, in black type: "THE HORSE IN MOTION. / Illustrated by / MUYBRIDGE. / Patent for apparatus applied for. / "SALLIE GARDNER," owned by LELAND STANFORD; ridden by G. DOMM, running at a 1.40 gait over the Palo Alto track, 19th June, 1878. / The negatives of these photographs were made at intervals of twenty-seven inches of distance, and about the twenty-fifth part of a second of time; they illustrate consecutive positions assumed / during a single stride of the mare. The vertical lines were twenty-seven inches apart; the horizontal lines represent elevations of four inches each / The negatives were each exposed during the two-thousandth part of a second, and are absolutely "untouched".

Markingsnone

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Terms

DescriptionGrid of a series of 12 images (3 rows of 4) depicting a rider on horseback, in profile, as the horse trots. The frames are numbered 1 through 12 and there are series of vertical lines behind the horse with a numbered line above.Gallery Label

Gallery Label

By the late 1870s, the increased sensitivity and efficiency of the dry-plate process transformed photographic practice by both eliminating the need to prepare negatives in the darkroom and allowing for shorter exposures. Eadweard Muybridge used this new technology of high-speed photography to record and analyze human and animal locomotion. In the late 1870s, and under the sponsorship of former California governor Leland Stanford, Muybridge sought to discover whether a racehorse, at any point in its stride, had all four legs off the ground at once. Using a battery of 24 cameras, Muybridge's discovery-that, in fact, a horse was fully airborne at certain moments-was a revelation in both scientific and artistic communities, changing centuries-old perceptions.

Provenance

Hallmark Cards, Inc., Kansas City, MO, 1998;
Given by Hallmark Cards, Inc. to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2005.

Published References

Mary V. Jessup Hood and Robert Bartlett Haas, "Eadweard Muybridge's Yosemite Valley Photographs, 1867-1872," California Historical Society Quarterly 42:1 (March 1963): 5-26; "California," New York Times (November 1, 1874): 2; "An Accused Murderer Acquitted," New York Times (February 18, 1875): 1; and Phillip Prodger, Time Stands Still: Muybridge and the Instantaneous Photography Movement (New York: Oxford University Press/Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, 2003).

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