?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 45,000
EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE (1830-1904) A selection of 50 plates from Animal Locomotion. This outstanding collection from Muybridge's groundbreaking series includes figures riding and jumping horses; men wrestling, running, shooting, playing cricket, jumping, and somersaulting, nearly all unclothed; women climbing, stepping, dancing, and ascending stairs, also primarily unclothed; and animals, including a sloth, deer, a jaguar, birds, and a camel. Also includes a self-portrait of Muybridge hammering and sawing. Collotypes, the images a variety of sizes, but measuring approximately 6 5/8x17 3/8 inches (16.8x44.1 cm.), and smaller, the two-toned sheets 19x24 inches (48.3x61 cm.), all but one with Muybridge's letterpress credit, series titles, plate number, copyright, and date on recto. 1887
In an historic era of western expansion and industrial innovation, Eadweard Muybridge was a visionary photographer who forever changed Victorian notions of movement and time.
Eccentric and adventurous, the British-born artist first photographed San Francisco (including a sweeping 6-foot long panorama) and the remote Yosemite Valley in the 1860s. By the following decade, he pushed photography's boundaries even further by developing ways in which multiple cameras could be used to capture locomotion in real time. (Apparently he set out to capture movement after he was commissioned by Leland Stanford, the former Governor of California, to satisfy a bet about whether all four horses' legs leave the ground as it trots or gallops.)
Subsequently Muybridge was supported by the University of Pennsylvania to develop motion studies depicting humans and animals. Between 1883 and 1886 he produced an astounding 100,000 pictures, including self-portraits, in a series he called "Animal Locomotion." Both scientific and artistic, a Prospectus promoted his seminal work as "A work for the Art Connoisseur, the Scientist, the Artist, and the Student of Art of Nature." The images--which veer from playful and sophisticated to analytic and austere--were published in sets of 100 (the contents to be determined by the subscriber or the author), with 781 in total.
A tantalizing precursor to 20th-century film making, today Muybridge's serial imagery seems to play for the viewer as a visually stunning, silent reel.
#8 Male, Walking #21 Female, Walking, both elbows bent #69 Female, Walking, both elbows bent #87 Female, Ascending incline, bucket water each hand #92 Female, Ascending stairs #96 Female, Ascending stairs looking round, waving handkerchief #157 Male, Jumping; running twist high jump #158 Male, Jumping; running twist high jump #166 Male, Jumping; over man's back (leap-frog) #171 Female, Stepping up on a trestle #183 Female, Walking on hands and feet #184 Female, Walking on hands and feet #186 Male, Hopping on right foot #188 Dancing (fancy) #191 Female, Dancing (fancy) #197 Male and Female, Dancing waltz two models #218 Male, Stooping and lifting full demijohn to shoulder #262 Female, Getting out of hammock #289 Male, Cricket; round arm bowling #291 Male, Cricket; batting; drive #345 Male, Wrestling, lock #346 Male, Wrestling, lock #352 Male, "Shoulder," "order," and "carry arms" #358 Male, Lying on back and firing #363 Male, Running somersault #376 Male, Blacksmith, hammering on anvil #382 Male, Lifting a log on end #485 Female, Two models #491 Male, A, hammering at anvil; B, hammering at anvil; C, using hatchet; D, sawing a board (Self Portrait) #510 Male, Contortions on the ground #513 Female, Getting on and off table #544 Female, Artificially-induced convulsions #549 Male, Epilepsy; walking #581 Horses, Walking; bareback; rider, 43, nude; light-gray horse, #601 Horses, Trotting; saddle; brown mare, #611 Horses, Trotting; sulky; gray maren Katydid #615 Horses, Canter; bareback; dark-gray Belgian horse, Hansel #634 Horses, Gallop; saddle; gray horse, Dan #642 Horses, Jumping a hurdle; saddle; rider, 105, nude; gray mare; Pandora #646 Horses, Jumping a hurdle; saddle; rider, 105, nude; gray mare, Pandora #682 Fallow deer; buck; A, trotting; B, galloping #688 Fallow deer; buck and group of does; galloping #702 Gnu; bucking and galloping #724 Lion; walking, turning around #731 Jaguar; A, walking; B, turning around #742 Bactrian camel, A, racking; B, #750 Sloth; walking suspended on a horizontal pole #762 Cockatoo; flying #764 Fish hawk; flying #770 American eagle; flying near the ground
