Plate Number 630. "Pandora" galloping, saddled

Art Historical Context

Step into the pioneering world of motion photography with *Plate Number 630. "Pandora" gall, saddled* by Eadweard Muybridge, created in 1887. This collotype print captures a saddled horse named Pandora in full gallop, part of Muybridge's monumental *Animal Locomotion* series Commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania, the series comprised over 780 plates documenting animals and humans in motion using a battery of up to 24 cameras triggered sequentially by the subject's movement. Muybridge's work settled the age-old debate about whether all four horse hooves leave the ground during a gallop—proving they do. Printed via collotype, a precise planographic process that faithfully reproduced photographic details on a large sheet (47.63 × 60.33 cm), this image exemplifies early scientific visualization. Muybridge, a British-born innovator, bridged art and science, influencing future filmmakers like the Lumière brothers and Eakins. Acquired by the Corcoran Gallery in 1887 and now in the National Gallery of Art's Corcoran Collection, it highlights photography's shift from static portraiture to dynamic study. Today, *Pandora* invites us to marvel at frozen moments of speed, revealing the rhythmic poetry of equine motion and Muybridge's genius in unlocking visual secrets of the natural world.

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...