Plate Number 378. Blacksmith, hammering on anvil with two hands
Medium
collotype
Dimensions
image: 19.6 × 38.6 cm (7 11/16 × 15 3/16 in.) sheet: 48.3 × 61.3 cm (19 × 24 1/8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, 1887)
Accession Number
2014.79.399
Art Historical Context
Step into the groundbreaking world of motion photography with *Plate Number 378. Blacksmith, on anvil with two hands by Eadweard Muybridge, created in 1887. Muybridge, a pioneering British-American photographer, captured this dynamic sequence as part of his monumental *Animal Locomotion*—11,000 photographs documenting human and animal movement using a battery of 24 cameras triggered in rapid succession. Commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania, these studies shattered preconceptions about how bodies move, influencing artists like Thomas Eakins and even laying groundwork for motion pictur...
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...