Eadweard Muybridge Photographs Running Horse,'73

1873 Pictures of Famous Trotter Occident Aim To Settle Debate

Oct 16, 2008

In the 1870s some racehorse cognoscenti pondered whether at any time while running, horses have all hooves off the ground, an idea sometimes called unsupported transit.

Horse breeder, former California governor and president of the Central Pacific Railroad and the Pacific Mail Steamship companies Leland Stanford hired British-born Eadweard Muybridge to answer this question. Stanford asked Muybridge, a well-known photographer, to shoot Occident, his harness racing horse. In taking on photographing a moving subject, Muybridge was entering new territory. At that time few had ever tried to take photos of moving subjects, and most were of people walking down the street.

Occident's Pedigree; Goldsmith Maid

In 1863 Occident was a foal whose sire was Doc. His dam was an untrained bay mare of undetermined bloodline that had a trotter's gait. He had at least five owners before Stanford purchased him in 1870. His first owner let him run freely for five years. A couple of owners used him as a draft horse. With kind treatment, another owner tamed him in two months. Another began to train him. Then Stanford became his owner.

Perhaps Muybridge first photographed him in mid-1872, as he has written, but if he did the results of those Sacramento sessions might have been disappointing because neither the images nor independent written accounts concerning them have been found. But in April 1873 Muybridge did photograph Occident in Sacramento, where Stanford then lived and kept his horses.

According to the April 7, 1873 issue of the Alta California newspaper, on the third day of photographing he finally took an image that showed promise. Using a shutter speed that he estimated to be 1/500th of a second, he"stopped" the movements of the horse, driver and sulky. But he did not judge the images to be quality ones. The originals, which undoubtedly were negatives on glass plates which could then be printed, have not been found.

Times for the Record Books

Occident became famous in 1873 when in Sacramento on September 17 he trotted the mile in 2:16 3/4, the fastest time that year. That time tied the mark set by the mare Goldsmith Maid, who would post a flat 2:16 on July 16, 1874 to break the record. The great mare had a 13-year career in which she won 95 of 123 races. In 1953 she was elected to the U. S. Harness Racing Hall of Fame. No evidence exists that Muybridge was present to photograph Occident in Sepember 1873.

Perhaps the 1873 Currier & Ives lithograph entitled the California Wonder OCCIDENT, owned by Gov. L. Stanford was based on the 1873 photo session. The print shows all fours off the ground. While Muybridge's work seemed to supoort the concept of unsupported transit with blurry images, he and Stanford knew that better images were necessary to convince the public. So the experiments continued. Muybridge's subsequent photos would bring him acclaim as a pioneer in photography and as a chronicler of animal locomotion.

Haas, Robert Bartlett. Muybridge: Man in Motion. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.

Stanford Univeristy. Department of Art. Eadweard Muybridge: The Stanford Years, 1872-1882. Stanford: Stanford Univeristy. 1972.

Tutorow, Norman E. The Governor: The Life and Legacy of Leland Stanford. Vol. 1. Spokane: Arthur H. Clark Company. 2004.

The copyright of the article Eadweard Muybridge Photographs Running Horse,'73 in Harness/Trotting Racing is owned by Linda N. Riggins. Permission to republish Eadweard Muybridge Photographs Running Horse,'73 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.