Plate Number 288. Baseball, error

Art Historical Context

Step into the groundbreaking world of motion capture with Eadweardbridge's *Plate Number 288., error* (1887), a collotype print from his seminal *Animal Locomotion* series This 26.5 × 28.9 cm image freezes a baseball player mid-action—poised to catch but committing an "error," likely fumbling the ball. Muybridge, a pioneering British-American photographer, captured these sequential frames using multiple cameras triggered in rapid succession, dissecting human movement like never before. Produced as part of an 11-volume set of 781 plates, this work emerged from Muybridge's experiments begun in the 1870s, proving a trotting horse lifts all four hooves off the ground. By 1887, funded by the University of Pennsylvania, he expanded to athletes, dancers, and everyday actions, influencing early cinema, animation, and scientific study of biomechanics. The collotype medium—a photomechanical process—enabled exquisite detail and large-scale reproduction (sheet: 48.5 × 60.9 cm), making complex motion studies accessible to scholars and the public. Today, in the National Gallery of Art's Corcoran Collection, this plate celebrates 19th-century America's growing baseball craze while highlighting Muybridge's artistic genius in blending science and art. It's a playful reminder that even pros err—captured forever in split seconds.

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...