Eadweard J. Muybridge

Born in Surry, England, Eadweard J. Muybridge was originally known as a landscape photographer. However, after the owner of the Union Pacific Railroad, Leland Stanford, hired Muybridge to photograph a galloping horse, the artist became famous for his studies of motion.

Through the support of influential Philadelphians and the University of Pennsylvania, in 1883 Muybridge received access to a veterinary hospital, outdoor and indoor studios, as well as a $5,000 advance to begin his photographic examination of human and animal locomotion. As a result, over 100,000 images were produced, and the best 781 were published as collotype plates.

ADDITIONAL BIO

Eadweard James Muybridge (/ˌɛdwərd ˈmaɪbrɪdʒ/; 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904, birth name Edward James Muggeridge) was an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. He adopted the name Eadweard Muybridge, believing it to be the original Anglo-Saxon form of his name.

He immigrated to the United States as a young man but remained obscure until 1868, when his large photographs of Yosemite Valley, California, made him world famous. Today, Muybridge is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion in 1877 and 1878, which used multiple cameras to capture motion in stop-motion photographs, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip used in cinematography.[1]

In his earlier years in San Francisco, Muybridge had become known for his landscape photography, particularly of the Yosemite Valley. He also photographed the Tlingit people in Alaska, and was commissioned by the United States Army to photograph the Modoc War in 1873. In 1874 he shot and killed Major Harry Larkyns, his wife's lover, but was acquitted in a jury trial on the grounds of justifiable homicide.[2] He travelled for more than a year in Central America on a photographic expedition in 1875.

In the 1880s, Muybridge entered a very productive period at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, producing over 100,000 images of animals and humans in motion, capturing what the human eye could not distinguish as separate movements. He spent much of his later years giving public lectures and demonstrations of his photography and early motion picture sequences. He also edited and published compilations of his work, which greatly influenced visual artists and the developing fields of scientific and industrial photography. Born Edward James Muggeridge, he was of partial Dutch descent. As an adult in the United States, Muggeridge changed his name several times, starting with "Muggridge". In the 1850s in the United States, he used the surname "Muygridge".[3]

After he returned from Britain to the United States in 1867 he used the surname "Muybridge". In addition, he used the pseudonym Helios (Greek god of the sun) to sign many of his photographs. He also used this as the name of his studio and made it the middle name for his only son, Florado Muybridge, born in 1874.[4]

While travelling on a photography expedition in the Spanish-speaking nations of Central America in 1875, the photographer advertised his works under the name "Eduardo Santiago Muybridge" in Guatemala.[5] After an 1882 trip to England, he changed the spelling of his first name to "Eadweard," the Old English form of his name. The spelling was probably derived from the spelling of King Edward's Christian (first) name as shown on the plinth of the Kingston coronation stone, which had been re-erected in the town in 1850. He used "Eadweard Muybridge" for the rest of his career,[3][6] but his gravestone carries his name as "Eadweard Maybridge".

Early life and career

Muybridge was born in Kingston upon Thames, England, on 9 April 1830 to John and Susan Muggeridge; he had three brothers. His father was a grain and coal merchant, with business spaces on the ground floor of their house, and family living spaces above. After his father died in 1843, his mother carried on the business. His cousin Norman Selfe who also grew up in Kingston upon Thames moved to Australia and, following a family tradition, became a renowned engineer.[7]

Muybridge emigrated to the United States at the age of 25, arriving in San Francisco in 1855, a few years after California became a state, and while the city was still the "capital of the Gold Rush."[8] He started a career as a publisher's agent for the London Printing and Publishing Company, and as a bookseller. At the time, the city was booming, with 40 bookstores, nearly 60 hotels and a dozen photography studios.[9] Later in his life he wrote about also having spent time in New Orleans and New York City during his early years in the United States.[10 Eadweard Muybridge returned to his native England permanently in 1894, and continued to lecture extensively throughout Great Britain. He returned to the US once more, in 1896–1897, to settle financial affairs and to dispose of property related to his work at the University of Pennsylvania. He retained control of his negatives, which he used to publish two popular books of his work, Animals in Motion (1899) and The Human Figure in Motion (1901), both of which remain in print over a century later.[43]

Muybridge died on 8 May 1904 in Kingston upon Thames of prostate cancer at the home of his cousin Catherine Smith.[44] Muybridge was cremated, and his ashes were interred at Woking in Surrey. For unknown reasons, his headstone is engraved with the name "Eadweard Maybridge".[28]

In 2004, a British Film Institute commemorative plaque was installed on the outside wall of the former Smith house, at Park View, 2 Liverpool Road.[45] Many of his papers and collected artifacts were donated to the Kingston Library, and eventually passed to the Kingston Museum in his place of birth.

REFERENCES

Robert Bartlett Haas. Muybridge, Man in Motion, 1976.

Gordon Hendricks. Eadweard Muybridge, Father of the Motion Picture, 1975.

Stephen Herbert (Ed.) Eadweard Muybridge: The Kingston Museum Bequest, 2004 1-903000-07-6.

Anita Ventura Mozley (Ed.) Eadweard Muybridge. The Stanford Years 1872–82, 1972.

Arthur P. Shimamura, "Muybridge in Motion: Travels in Art, Psychology, and Neurology", 2002, History of Photography, Volume 26, Number 4, 341–350.

Rebecca Solnit. River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, 2003 ISBN 0-670-03176-3.

Philip Brookman. Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change, 2010 ISBN 978-3-86521-926-8 (Steidl).