Plate Number 520. A-C: Wrestling. D: Sparring without gloves
Medium
collotype
Dimensions
image: 22.4 × 31.6 cm (8 13/16 × 12 7/16 in.) sheet: 48.26 × 60.96 cm (19 × 24 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, 1887)
Accession Number
2015.19.4123
Art Historical Context
Eadweard Muybridge’s 1887 collotype, Plate Number 520, captures the dynamic sequence of human combat through four carefully timed frames labeled A–C (wrestling) and D (sparring without gloves). Part of his landmark publication *Animal Locomotion*, the image records two men grappling and exchanging blows in rapid succession. Muybridge achieved this by positioning multiple cameras along a track and triggering them with electromagnetic shutters, freezing motion that the naked eye could not perceive. The medium of collotype allowed these photographic studies to be reproduced with remarkable clari...
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...