Plate Number 259. Lying on a couch and turning over on side
Medium
collotype
Dimensions
image: 23.5 × 31.8 cm (9 1/4 × 12 1/2 in.) sheet: 48.15 × 61.1 cm (18 15/16 × 24 1/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, 1887)
Accession Number
2014.79.288
Art Historical Context
Eadweard Muybridge created this collotype as part of his groundbreaking 1887 publication *Animal Locomotion*, a monumental study of human and animal movement. Plate 259 captures a woman lying on a couch as she turns onto her side, freezing incremental stages of motion across a single sheet. Working at the University of Pennsylvania, Muybridge used banks of cameras triggered in rapid sequence to settle debates about how bodies actually move—work that helped lay the foundation for modern cinema and influenced generations of artists and scientists. The collotype process allowed Muybridge to repr...
About the Artist
Eadweard Muybridge · 1830–1904
Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) was an English-American photographer who revolutionized the understanding of motion through his pioneering chronophotographic studies. Born Edward James Muggeridge in Kingston upon Thames, England, he emigrated to America and became famous first for his dramatic landscape photographs of Yosemite Valley, then for his groundbreaking motion studies that proved horses li...