Plate Number 377. Two blacksmiths, hammering on anvil
Medium
collotype
Dimensions
image: 25.2 × 29.7 cm (9 15/16 × 11 11/16 in.) sheet: 48.4 × 61.2 cm (19 1/16 × 24 1/8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, 1887)
Accession Number
2014.79.398
Rights
Public Domain
Art Historical Context
Eadweard Muybridge’s *Plate Number 377. Two blacksmiths, hammering on anvil* captures a precise instant of human labor in 1887. The image freezes two figures mid-swing, their hammers poised above a glowing anvil, revealing the coordinated rhythm of their work. As part of Muybridge’s groundbreaking motion studies, the photograph distills complex movement into a single, readable frame that rewards close looking. Muybridge, already celebrated for his sequential photography of animals and people, used banks of cameras and precise timing to document everyday actions. This collotype print—made from...
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...