Eadweard Muybridge
Movement of the hand; beating time

Public Domain

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Images(3)

Artist Eadweard Muybridge(English, 1830–1904)English, 1830–1904

CultureAmerican

Titles

Movement of the hand; beating time
Plate 535 from Animal Locomotion

Date1887

PlaceUnited States

MediumCollotype

DimensionsImage: 9 1/2 × 11 7/8 in. (24.1 × 30.1 cm)
Plate: 13 9/16 × 19 11/16 in. (34.4 × 50 cm)
Sheet: 18 3/8 × 23 1/4 in. (46.7 × 59 cm)

Credit LineThe Target Collection of American Photography, museum purchase funded by Target Stores

Object number81.135

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Special Collections

Target Collection of American Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionAlthough Muybridge first made his name in 1867 with large-format photographs of Yosemite Valley, he is best known for his pioneering photographic studies of motion, begun in the 1870s, and his early work in motion-picture projection. In the 1880s, his photography of humans and animals in motion, made using 24 cameras arranged horizontally and parallel to the line of motion, was sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania. Movement of the hand; beating time is one of 781 plates, comprising 20,000 photographs, published in 1887 as Animal Locomotion: An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Connective Phases of Animal Movements. Unlike other pictures in the massive set of portfolios that captured movement of the entire body across space, this work traces the rhythmic play of hand and fingers against a dark backdrop.
Provenance[Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco]; purchased by MFAH, 1981.
Exhibition HistoryExhibited Photographic Masterworks: Recent Acquisitions from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Glassell School January 23 - March 4, 1990

Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Inscribed in pencil, recto, top left: 4 [circled]

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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