Beschreibung:

Title: Animal Locomotion: An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements. 1872-1885. Published Under the Auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. Plates Author: Muybridge, Eadweard Place: Philadelphia Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Date: 1887 Description: Title-leaf printed in red & black, + 21 collotype plates from photographs, each with multiple stop-action images. 18¾x23½, original cloth, gilt leather cover label. Author's Edition. Presentation copy inscribed in pencil on the title-page "...with the warm esteem of The Author, 31 March 1890." The recipient's name has been erased, but seems to have possibly been Jos. Gabrielson. This is the very rare Author's Edition of Muybridge's Animal Locomotion, presenting a selection of the most interesting plates from his historic study of motion using stop-action or freeze-frame photograph. Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904), who gained his early fame for his spectacular views of Yosemite and his breath-taking panorama of San Francisco, developed the stop-action technique at the request of Leland Stanford to settle a bet on whether a horse's four legs wear off the ground at the same time during a gallop. He then went to the University of Pennsylvania and used the technique to study all sorts of animate motion, from men, women and children to birds, dogs, dromedaries and more. The final work totaled 781 plates, bound in 11 or 16 volumes, but smaller selections could be purchased, and evidently a small number of these "Author's Editions" were produced for presentation. OCLC lists only three examples, at George Eastman House, College of Physicians of Philadelphia, and the University of Texas, but those are catalogued as having 16 plates, whereas the present example contains 21 plates. These include the famed plate of a nude man swinging a baseball bat, felt by some to be modeled by Walt Whitman. Whitman was close friends with the artist Thomas Eakins who was quite interested in Muybridge's techniques as an aid to studying the human body. Other plates include a nude man bowling a cricket ball; a topless woman playing with her naked baby girl; A woman bathing another woman; a man in jock-strap walking vigorously; a dromedary running; a topless woman jumping rope; and more. Lot Amendments Condition: Spine neatly repaired; some minor foxing and soiling; very good. Item number: 199138