It is now about two years since a very remarkable series of instantaneous photographs, representing a horse at full gallop, were brought over to England from America. They were executed with great skill and care by an ingenious gentleman of San Francisco, and have been tested in London by means of an instrument called the praxinoscope, which brings them in succession and at regular intervals before the eye. Their effect seen in this way is marvellous. The grotesque, absurd figures start into life, and the result is a wonderful representation of a race-horse at full speed.
There is therefore no room for doubting the absolute correctness of every one of these diagrams, which I have had enlarged for this lecture. I need not describe in detail the manner in which the original negatives were taken. It will be sufficient to say that electricity was absolutely indispensable for the operation.
Twelve cameras were set up in a line with the track; they were placed twenty-seven inches apart, and each negative was taken instantaneously as soon as the galloping horse was opposite the camera. The word “instantaneously” does not at all represent the rapidity with which the negatives were taken. It was calculated that the time for each operation was under 1/2000th Part of a second. The interval between the production of the negatives was one twenty-fifth of a second, which, if multiplied by twelve, will give about half a second for the completion of the series. The original photographs are of course mere dark silhouettes, but it is very wonderful that any result at all should have been obtained in the 1/2000th part of a second. We are told that the “celebrated flyer Sally Gardner was ridden by the jockey Domm at a 1:40 gait in front of the apparatus.” The 1:40 gait translated into English means that Sally Gardner was going at the rate of a mile in one minute forty seconds, which certainly is a great pace even for a Derby winner.
Now, it has been known for a great many years that the usual sporting way of representing a racer at full gallop is not correct. Stonehenge, in his book on the horse, published more than twenty years ago, says:—
“To represent the gallop pictorially in a perfectly correct manner is almost impossible; at all events it has never yet been accomplished; the ordinary and received interpretation being altogether erroneous. When carefully watched, the horse in full gallop will be seen to extend himself very much, but not nearly to the length which is assigned to him by artists. To give the idea of high speed, the hind legs are thrust backward and the forelegs forward in a most unnatural position, which, if it could be assumed in reality, would inevitably lead to a fall and most probably to a broken back.”
Stonehenge goes on to observe that “many artists have tried to break through the time-honored recipe for drawing a galloping horse, but that the eye at once rebels. The new version may be scientifically correct, but the mind refuses its assent to the idea of great pace which is desired to be given.”
Amongst the “many artists” alluded to by Stonehenge I may mention my old acquaintance John Leech. Leech was far too keen an observer to be satisfied with the absolute truth of the ordinary method of representing a horse going across country, and accordingly he tried all kinds of positions for the legs, but always had to go back to some modification of the usually accepted one, viz., all four legs off the ground, and all more or less extended. He remarked to me thirty years ago how impracticable it was to represent the true action of a galloping horse satisfactorily.
I wonder what Stonehenge and Leech would have said, could they have seen these extraordinary photographs. Out of the series of twelve there are only two (Nos. 2 and 3) which give the least idea of galloping, and in these two all the legs are tucked under the horse in a bunch. Well may the editor of the Field have written back to America to say that there was some mistake, as, barring two, which looked something like galloping, all the others represented the horse as more or less stationary. To me they looked more like the tricks of a highly-trained steed in a circus.
However grotesque the position of a horse’s legs may be, we must (per force) accept them as truthful, and to those sceptics who cannot reconcile their minds to this fact, I would observe that four-footed animals don’t fly; their legs not only touch the ground, but must at one particular 2000th part of a second be vertical, and I am quite sure that under these conditions the cleverest draughtsman would fail to make the horse appear galloping. Géricault, Horace Vernet, and all the best delineators of horses galloping, have represented them with all the feet in the air and the legs more or less extended.
It has now been proved, beyond the possibility of doubt, that this position is never assumed by the horse. Does it follow that the pictures of these artists are all wrong? By no means. Speaking scientifically, they are wrong, but science and art, though often bracketed together, are very distinct, and ought to be independent of each other; so that if the old-fashioned way of representing a racer conveys to the mind a better idea of speed than any of these diagrams, we ought to continue to wallow in our ignorance. It is impossible to say what the art of the future may be. We may get valuable hints from these and future instantaneous photographs; we may learn to modify, to a considerable extent, the time-honored sporting way of depicting horseraces, but I can hardly believe that the struggle for the Derby of 1981 will be represented as above.[2]