Plate Number 590. "Clinton" ambling, bareback; rider nude
Medium
collotype
Dimensions
image: 14.6 × 46.9 cm (5 3/4 × 18 7/16 in.) sheet: 47.63 × 60.33 cm (18 3/4 × 23 3/4 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, 1887)
Accession Number
2014.79.558
Art Historical Context
Eadweard Muybridge's *Plate Number 590. "Clinton" ambling bareback; rider nude (1887) captures a pivotal moment in the history of photography and motion studies. Part of Muybridge's groundbreaking *Animal Locomotion*, this collotype print depicts a horse named "Clinton in a gentle ambling gait, ridden bareback by a nude figure. Muybridge, a pioneering British-American photographer, produced 781 such plates between 1884 and 1887, using multiple cameras triggered in rapid succession to "freeze" movement, debunking myths about how animals—and humans—truly locomote. The nude rider emphasizes anat...
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...