Plate Number 740. Bactrian camel galloping
Medium
collotype
Dimensions
image: 22.23 × 33.66 cm (8 3/4 × 13 1/4 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
2014.79.665
Art Historical Context
Step into the pioneering world of motion photography with *Plate Number 740. Bactrian Galloping* by Eadweard Muy, created in 1887. This collotype print, measuring 22.23 × 33.66 cm, captures a rare sequence of a Bactrian camel in full gallop, part of Muybridge's monumental *Animal Locomotion*. Produced from high-fidelity photographs taken with his innovative battery of up to 24 cameras triggered by the animal's movement, it freezes the camel's exotic gait—those distinctive double humps swaying rhythmically—revealing nuances invisible to the naked eye. Muybridge, a British-American photographer...
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...