Eadweard Muybridge

April 9, 1830 (age 74)

Kingston upon Thames, United Kingdom

Eadweard Muybridge arrived in New Orleans in January 1855, and was registered there as a book agent by April. He probably arrived in California around Autumn 1855. He visited Sacramento as an agent selling illustrated Shakespeare books in April 1856, and soon after settled in San Francisco. In San Francisco, Eadweard Muybridge sold books and art (mostly prints). He shortly partnered with W.H. Oakes as engraver and publisher of lithograph prints and functioned as a book agent for the London Printing and Publishing Company. In April 1858, Eadweard Muybridge moved his store to 163 Clay Street, where his friend Silas Selleck had a photo gallery. He was a member of the Mechanic's Institute of the City of San Francisco. In 1859, he was elected as one of the directors for the San Francisco Mercantile Library Association. Muybridge’s experiments in photographing motion began in 1872 when the railroad magnate Leland Stanford hired him to prove that during a particular moment in a trotting horse’s gait, all four legs are off the ground simultaneously. His first efforts were unsuccessful because his camera lacked a fast shutter. The project was then interrupted while Eadweard Muybridge was being tried for the murder of his wife’s lover. Although he was acquitted, he found it expedient to travel for a number of years in Mexico and Central America, making publicity photographs for the Union Pacific Railroad, a company owned by Stanford. In 1877 Eadweard Muybridge returned to California and resumed his experiments in motion photography, using a battery of from 12 to 24 cameras and a special shutter he developed that gave an exposure of 2/1000 of a second. This arrangement gave satisfactory results and proved Stanford’s contention. The results of Eadweard Muybridge’s work were widely published, most often in the form of line drawings taken from his photographs. They were criticized, however, by those who thought that horse’s legs could never assume such unlikely positions. To counter such criticism, Eadweard Muybridge gave lectures on animal locomotion throughout the United States and Europe. These lectures were illustrated with a zoopraxiscope, a lantern he developed that projected images in rapid succession onto a screen from photographs printed on a rotating glass disc, producing the illusion of moving pictures. The zoopraxiscope display, an important predecessor of the modern cinema, was a sensation at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. Eadweard Muybridge made his most important photographic studies of motion from 1884 to 1887 under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. These consisted of photographs of various activities of human figures, clothed and naked, which were to form a visual compendium of human movements for the use of artists and scientists. Many of these photographs were published in 1887 in the portfolio Animal Locomotion: An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements. Eadweard Muybridge continued to publicize and publish his work until 1900 when he retired to his birthplace. Eadweard Muybridge returned to his native England in 1894 and continued to lecture extensively throughout Great Britain. He returned to the US once more, in 1896-1897, to settle financial affairs and to dispose of property related to his work at the University of Pennsylvania. He retained control of his negatives, which he used to publish two popular books of his work, Animals in Motion (1899) and The Human Figure in Motion (1901), both of which remain in print over a century later. Eadweard Muybridge died on 8 May 1904 in Kingston upon Thames of prostate cancer at the home of his cousin Catherine Smith. His body was cremated, and its ashes interred in a grave at Woking in Surrey. On the grave's headstone his name is misspelled as "Eadweard Maybridge".

Eadweard Muybridge Edit Profile

also known as Edward James Muggeridge, Helios (Titan of the sun)

Photographer

Background

Eadweard Muybridge (original name Edward James Muggeridge) was born on April 9, 1830, in Kingston upon Thames, United Kingdom. He adopted the name Eadweard Muybridge, believing it to be the original Anglo-Saxon form of his name.

Education

Eadweard Muybridge emigrated to the United States at the age of 20, arriving in New York City. Here, he was possibly a partner in the book business enterprise Muygridge & Bartlett together with a medicine student, which existed for about a year.

Career

Eadweard Muybridge arrived in New Orleans in January 1855, and was registered there as a book agent by April. He probably arrived in California around Autumn 1855. He visited Sacramento as an agent selling illustrated Shakespeare books in April 1856, and soon after settled in San Francisco. In San Francisco, Eadweard Muybridge sold books and art (mostly prints). He shortly partnered with W.H. Oakes as engraver and publisher of lithograph prints and functioned as a book agent for the London Printing and Publishing Company.

In April 1858, Eadweard Muybridge moved his store to 163 Clay Street, where his friend Silas Selleck had a photo gallery. He was a member of the Mechanic's Institute of the City of San Francisco. In 1859, he was elected as one of the directors for the San Francisco Mercantile Library Association.

Muybridge’s experiments in photographing motion began in 1872 when the railroad magnate Leland Stanford hired him to prove that during a particular moment in a trotting horse’s gait, all four legs are off the ground simultaneously. His first efforts were unsuccessful because his camera lacked a fast shutter. The project was then interrupted while Eadweard Muybridge was being tried for the murder of his wife’s lover. Although he was acquitted, he found it expedient to travel for a number of years in Mexico and Central America, making publicity photographs for the Union Pacific Railroad, a company owned by Stanford.

In 1877 Eadweard Muybridge returned to California and resumed his experiments in motion photography, using a battery of from 12 to 24 cameras and a special shutter he developed that gave an exposure of 2/1000 of a second. This arrangement gave satisfactory results and proved Stanford’s contention.

The results of Eadweard Muybridge’s work were widely published, most often in the form of line drawings taken from his photographs. They were criticized, however, by those who thought that horse’s legs could never assume such unlikely positions. To counter such criticism, Eadweard Muybridge gave lectures on animal locomotion throughout the United States and Europe. These lectures were illustrated with a zoopraxiscope, a lantern he developed that projected images in rapid succession onto a screen from photographs printed on a rotating glass disc, producing the illusion of moving pictures. The zoopraxiscope display, an important predecessor of the modern cinema, was a sensation at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago.

Eadweard Muybridge made his most important photographic studies of motion from 1884 to 1887 under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. These consisted of photographs of various activities of human figures, clothed and naked, which were to form a visual compendium of human movements for the use of artists and scientists. Many of these photographs were published in 1887 in the portfolio Animal Locomotion: An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements. Eadweard Muybridge continued to publicize and publish his work until 1900 when he retired to his birthplace.

Eadweard Muybridge returned to his native England in 1894 and continued to lecture extensively throughout Great Britain. He returned to the US once more, in 1896-1897, to settle financial affairs and to dispose of property related to his work at the University of Pennsylvania. He retained control of his negatives, which he used to publish two popular books of his work, Animals in Motion (1899) and The Human Figure in Motion (1901), both of which remain in print over a century later.

Eadweard Muybridge died on 8 May 1904 in Kingston upon Thames of prostate cancer at the home of his cousin Catherine Smith. His body was cremated, and its ashes interred in a grave at Woking in Surrey. On the grave's headstone his name is misspelled as "Eadweard Maybridge".

Achievements

Today, Eadweard Muybridge is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion in 1877 and 1878, which used multiple cameras to capture motion in stop-motion photographs, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip used in cinematography.

Works

The Human Figure in Motion The Human Figure in Motion

Animals in Motion (Dover Anatomy for Artists) Animals in Motion (Dover Anatomy for Artists)

Vernal Falls at Yosemite Vernal Falls at Yosemite

$Muybridge\'s The Horse in Motion Muybridge\'s The Horse in Motion$ Boys playing Leapfrog Boys playing Leapfrog

Stepping on and over a chair Stepping on and over a chair

Crossing brook on stepping-stones with a fishing pole and can Crossing brook on stepping-stones with a fishing pole and can

book
- The Human Figure in Motion
  (This is the largest selection ever made from the famous M...)
  1955
- Animals in Motion (Dover Anatomy for Artists) 1957
photography
- Vernal Falls at Yosemite
  1872
- Muybridge's The Horse in Motion
  1878
- Boys playing Leapfrog
  1883
- Stepping on and over a chair
  1887
- Crossing brook on stepping-stones with a fishing pole and can
  1887

Views

Quotations: "Only photography has been able to divide human life into a series of moments, each of them has the value of a complete existence."

Membership

Mechanic's Institute of the City of San Francisco , San Francisco

Personality

Eadweard Muybridge was more of the type that would stay up all night to read classics. He was also used to leaving home by himself for days, weeks, or even months, visiting faraway places for personal projects or assignments. This didn't change after his marriage.

Interests

His motion studies were probably influenced by Oscar G. Rejlander.

Connections

On 20 May 1871, 41-year-old Eadweard Muybridge married 21-year-old divorcee Flora Shallcross Stone. The differences in their tastes and temperaments were understood to have been due to their age difference. Eadweard Muybridge did not care for many of the amusements that she sought, so she went to the theatre and other attractions without him, and he seemed to be fine with that. On 14 April 1874 Flora gave birth to a son, Florado Helios Muybridge.

At some stage, Flora became romantically involved with one of their friends, Harry Larkyns. Eadweard Muybridge intervened several times and believed the affair was over when he sent Flora to stay with a relative and Larkyns found a job at a mine near Calistoga. In mid-October 1874, Eadweard Muybridge learned how serious the relationship between his wife and Larkyns really was. Flora's maternity nurse revealed many details and she had in her possession some love letters that the couple had still been writing to each other. At her place, Eadweard Muybridge also came across a picture of Florado with "Harry" written on the back in Flora's handwriting, suggesting that she believed the child to be Larkyns'.

On 17 October, Eadweard Muybridge went to Calistoga to track down Larkyns. Upon finding him, he said, "Here's the answer to the letter you sent my wife", and shot him point-blank. Larkyns died that night, and Eadweard Muybridge was arrested without protest and put in the Napa jail.

Flora filed for divorce on 17 December 1874 on the ground of extreme cruelty, but this first petition was dismissed. It was reported that she fully sympathized with the prosecution of her husband.

Eadweard Muybridge was tried for murder in February 1875. He was acquitted on the grounds of justifiable homicide, with the explanation that if their verdict was not in accordance with the law, it was in accordance with the law of human nature. In other words: they believed they could not punish a person for doing something that they themselves would do in similar circumstances.

Flora's second petition for divorce received a favorable ruling, and order for alimony was entered in April 1875. Flora died suddenly in July 1875 while Eadweard Muybridge was in Central America. She had placed their son, Florado Helios Muybridge (later nicknamed "Floddie" by friends), with a French couple. In 1876, Eadweard Muybridge had the boy moved from a Catholic orphanage to a Protestant one and paid for his care. Otherwise, he had little to do with him.

Father:: John Muybridge
Mother:: Susanna Muggeridge
Spouse:: Flora Shallcross Stone
Son:: Florado Helios Muybridge
Cousin:: Norman Selfe
Cousin:: Maybanke Anderson
Grandfather:: Robert Muggeridge
grandmother:: Hannah Charman
Brother:: George Muygridge
Brother:: Thomas S. Muygridge
colleague:: Thomas Houseworth
colleague:: William Pepper
colleague:: Thomas Eakins
Friend:: Silas Selleck

References

Watch Eadweard | Video A psychological drama centered around world-famous turn-of-the-century photographer who became the godfather of cinema, murdered his wife's lover, and was the last American to receive the justifiable homicide verdict.
2017
River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and the Mark Lynton History Prize Through the story of the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge, the author of Recollections of My Nonexistence explores what it was about California in the late 19th-century that enabled it to become such a center of technological and cultural innovation The world as we know it today began in California in the late 1800s, and Eadweard Muybridge had a lot to do with it. This striking assertion is at the heart of Rebecca Solnit’s new book, which weaves together biography, history, and fascinating insights into art and technology to create a boldly original portrait of America on the threshold of modernity.
2004
Indecent Exposures: Eadweard Muybridge's "Animal Locomotion" Nudes This fascinating book reveals how Eadweard Muybridge’s photographs of nudes in motion were produced and received, and how they propelled crucial scientific and cultural advancements of the modern era.
2015
Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change
2010

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