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PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION, NEW JERSEY
'Perhaps nothing since Daguerre had so unsettled the painter's certainties' (John Szarkowski, Looking at Photographs)
Eadweard Muybridge's important motion studies, created between 1883 and 1885, were published by the University of Philadelphia in 1887 as Animal Locomotion, a collection of 781 plates that described, in sequential frames, a series of diverse, characteristic activities undertaken by human beings and animals.
In this exhaustive undertaking, Muybridge took the uniquely ordinary and turned it into fine art - demonstrating both the pure mechanics of movement and also, more remarkably, an expressiveness in his choice of subject matter that still feels vital. Not only was Muybridge's achievement at the forefront of contemporary photographic and scientific experimentation, but it also led directly to the development of the modern film industry.
The present lot, some 400 collotype plates from a private collection, represents the most significant group to be offered in recent auction history.
EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE (1830-1904)
Selected plates from Animal Locomotion, 1871-1885
Details
EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE (1830-1904)
Selected plates from Animal Locomotion, 1871-1885
400 collotype plates from Animal Locomation, An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements, published under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, 1887. The majority with a letterpress credit, title, plate number copyright and reproduction limitation printed in the margin; varying sizes from 5 3/8 x 17½ (13.7 x 44.4cm.) to 8 3/8 x 13½in. (21.3 x 34.3cm.) (400)
Selected plates from Animal Locomotion, 1871-1885
400 collotype plates from Animal Locomation, An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements, published under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, 1887. The majority with a letterpress credit, title, plate number copyright and reproduction limitation printed in the margin; varying sizes from 5 3/8 x 17½ (13.7 x 44.4cm.) to 8 3/8 x 13½in. (21.3 x 34.3cm.) (400)
Provenance
Private collection;
by bequest to the present owner
by bequest to the present owner