Abstract
IT is of interest to analyse the reason why artists represent a galloping horse in a way unlike any of its real attitudes, as they have been photographed by Mr. Muybridge, and why the critical public have so long acquiesced in these incorrect representations without remonstrance. Partly, no doubt, it is owing to prevalent errors of conception which govern the judgment in its interpretation of a movement that is hard to follow. An excellent instance of this is to be seen in the Academy, in the diploma picture of Mr. Riviere, R.A., entitled “The King drinks.” It is a lion lapping water in the wrong way, by spooning his tongue outwards and upwards instead of curling it backwards, like the fingers of the half-closed hand when the knuckles are to the front, an action that may be conveniently studied in the kitten. The error of preconceived ideas partly explains the conventionally extended figure of the galloping horse; but I find the latter to be largely justified by the shape of the blur made on the eye by his rapid and various movements. I wish I could reproduce on a scale, however small, any one of the many plates published in “The Horse in Motion;” but it appears that the copyright of the photographs is disputed, and there are difficulties in the way of doing so, and I must make shift without them.
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GALTON, F. Conventional Representation of the Horse in Motion . Nature 26, 228–229 (1882). https://doi.org/10.1038/026228a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/026228a0