And now a word about the horse in action, as shown by instantaneous photography, and about the war waged between artists and photographers. Some disciples of Muybridge would fain have the artist depict an animal in an ungainly attitude, because the lens is apt to catch him at a point in his stride which looks ungainly, there being many more such points than handsome ones. It is the moving creature which we admire. The poetry of motion is rarely better seen than in a proudly stepping horse. But arrest that motion and you are apt to have that which the human eye can neither recognize nor delight itself withal. Arrested motion rarely suggests the actual motion we aim to depict. The lens will show you every spoke of a rapidly revolving wheel, as if at rest. The eye, or the artist, shows you a blur of motion. And so with other objects. The lens works in the hundredth part of a second; the eye is slower far.
To a certain extent photography, quoad art, is wrong and the limner is right. There are some horses which possess a very elegant carriage. In their action there are certain periods—generally those at which one fore and one hind leg are slowing up at the limit of their forward stride—when the eye catches an agreeable impression which is capable of being reduced to canvas,—though it is after all the proud motion itself which pleases, and this can only be suggested. Now, photography robs you of almost all the suggestiveness of the horse's action, unless you select only those photographs which approach the action caught by the human eye. Even after long study of the Muybridge silhouettes, the artistic lover of the horse feels that he must reject all but a small percentage of these wonderful anatomical studies. If there are periods in the horse's stride which are agreeable to the eye, why should the artist not select these for delineation? Why indeed does his art not bind him to do so?
You, Patroclus, are peculiarly elegant in motion. It is difficult to pick a flaw in the symmetry of your gaits. Slow or fast, fresh or tired, your motion is always proud and graceful. And yet out of many photographs, few suggest your action at all, fewer still even passably; none convey to its full extent what all your intimates well know.
To photograph well, a horse must have a good deal, but not an excessive amount of action, and with unquestioned grace of curves. The reason why horses in very rapid motion photograph illy is to be found in the too extreme curves described by their legs in the powerful strides of great speed, any position in which, arrested by the lens, looks exaggerated,—sprawling. The reason why, on the other hand, the photograph of a daisy-clipper moving slowly looks tame is the lack of action to suggest the motion which the eye follows in real life. Many of the best performers are plain in action. Some of the most faultless movers, so far as results or form are concerned, even when agreeable to the eye, will show unsightly photographs. Let any one who desires to test this matter have a half-dozen instantaneous photographs of his pet saddle beast taken. He will surely be convinced that a horse must be extremely handsome in motion to give even a passable portrait. If he gets one picture in four which shows acceptably, he may be sure that he owns a good-looking nag. Among the silhouettes in the Stanford Book, scarcely one in twenty shows a handsome outline. This seems to be owing, as above explained, to the speed exhibited in almost all the performances; and in the slow gaits, to the want of action in the subjects. Still, if the pictures had shown the light and shade which instantaneous photography is now able to give, many of the plates would have made artistic pictures.
There are certainly many minutiæ in which the artist can learn from the photograph. To give an instance: before reaching the ground, the leg in every gait must be stiffened, and the bottom of the foot brought parallel to the surface traveled over, or a stumble will ensue. This, at first blush, may look awkward; but it is not really so. The artist often forgets that a horse must sustain his weight on stiff legs, and that these straighten from their graceful curves to the supporting position in regular gradation, and reach this position just before the foot comes down. Some in other respects most attractive sketches fail in this. Often one sees the picture of an otherwise handsomely moving horse whose fetlock joint of the foot just being planted is so bent forward as to make a drop inevitable. This is certainly without the domain of true art.
The origin of such drawing lies probably in the fact that the eye catches the bent rather than the straight position of the fetlock, because the former occurs when the foot is higher above the ground, while the latter position is not so noticeable as being more out of the line of sight. But such stumbling pictures are as much a worry to the horseman's eye as the ugliest of the Muybridge gallopers is to the artist's; and they are wholly unnecessary.
There are many such minor points of criticism of the usual artistic work, which the artists should not deem beyond consideration. It is quite possible to make the truthful and the artistic go hand in hand.
Except, perhaps, in the gallop. This most disheartening gait will not be reduced to what we have been taught to like. There is but one of the five "times" of the gallop which suggests even tolerable speed,—the one when all four feet are in the air and gathered well under the horse. At the instant when one of the hind legs is reaching forward to land, there is sometimes a suggestion of great speed and vigor. But the successive stilted strides when the straightened legs in turn assume the body's weight oppress the very soul of the lover of the Racing Plates. It must fain be left to the wisest heads, and perhaps better to time, to bring daylight from this darkness.