Episode #59: True Crime/Fine Art: Eadweard Muybridge, Photo Pioneer and Jealous Husband (Season 6, Episode 6)
This season we’re learning that true crime and art history are two genres that have smashed together with some fascinating results. Today’s show: a photo pioneer goes off the jealousy deep end. It’s Eadweard Muybridge time!
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Episode Credits
Production and Editing by Kaboonki. Additional editing by Hannah Roberts. Theme music by Alex Davis. Social media assistance by Emily Crockett and Caroline Haller. Additional writing and research by Joce Mallin.
ArtCurious is sponsored by Anchorlight, an interdisciplinary creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle.
Additional music credits
"Story" by Meydän is licensed under BY 4.0; "Garden party" by TRG Banks is licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal; "Labyrinth Dreams" by Julie Maxwell's Piano Music is licensed under BY-ND-4.0; "Battalion" by krackatoa is licensed under BY-NC-SA 3.0 US; "Late Mornings" by Dexter Britain is licensed under BY-NC-SA 4.0. Based on a work at www.dexterbritain.com. Ads: "Monarch of the street" by Loyalty Freak Music is licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal (Away).
Recommended Reading
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Links and further resources
The Los Angeles Herald, 1874: A STARTLING TRAGEDY.
Arthur P. Shimamura, “Muybridge in Motion: Travels in Art, Psychology and Neurology”
The Atlantic: The Man Who Captured Time
Episode Transcript
We’re all photographers today. Practically everyone you know has a smartphone, and with that phone access comes a pretty nice-quality camera, and with the simple click of a button and the addition of a little filter here and a little crop there, we’re all artists, or at least we all have the ability to be artists. It’s so funny to think that less than two decades ago, I was schlepping around carrying dozens--DOZENS--of rolls of film on particularly picturesque vacations, just to be sure I had enough to cover me should the urge to capture a moment strike. It took up so much room in my carry-ons, you guys. And that’s not even including the camera itself and its sundry accessories. Photography of a certain quality is easy today. And thus it’s easy to take it for granted.
It’s pretty mind-blowing, though, to think about the birth of photography, of the many scientific advances that led to the development of a medium wherein we could freeze a moment in time onto a silvered plate, a plate of glass, and, finally, onto paper. It’s further fascinating to think of the moment where a photographer was able to make that next step, and to make those moments move again, unfreezing time and allowing for a scene to be recorded and played back, and back again. This was an incredible moment in art history--really, in human history-- and the man who is claimed as the father of the motion picture, and thus film as we know it, is an important one, one of the biggies. But it’s entirely possible that this big-name artist and inventor may very well have become a mere blip in our record books, never to reach his soaring heights if he wasn’t acquitted of a murder charge.
Some people think that visual art is dry, boring, lifeless. But the stories behind those paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs are weirder, crazier, or more fun than you can imagine. In season six, we are uncovering the dastardly deeds of several of art history’s famed artists, including their involvement--or participation--in murder most foul. In today’s episode, it’s the ascent of Eadweard Muybridge, photographic pioneer and the progenitor of the motion picture--and how a murder trial nearly derailed his historic career. This is the ArtCurious Podcast, exploring the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in Art History. I'm Jennifer Dasal.
Eadweard Muybridge was born in 1830 in the town of Kingston-upon Thames, England, now considered part of the greater metropolitan area of London. His given name was Edward James Muggeridge, but the idiosyncratic artist later adopted a new spelling of his first name, moving from the traditional spelling-- E-D-W-A-R-D -- to the Old English form, spelled E-A-D-W-E-A-R-D. He later adopted the surname of Muybridge because, in his mind, it was equally old-fashioned, and to be honest, he probably just thought it sounded cooler than Muggeridge. It is one of the many examples throughout his life that showed that Muybridge would do his own thing, not kowtowing to tradition or assumptions. The Muggeridge family--both Eadweard’s nuclear and extended family-- were merchants, trading in coal, corn, and grain, but Eadweard wasn’t interested in sticking close to home and carrying on the family business. If he was to be a merchant, he would do it elsewhere, and on his own terms. At age 20, he thus relocated to New York City, where he landed in 1850, where he landed a job with the London Printing and Publishing Company (fittingly) as a publisher’s agent. But even more adventure was beckoning the young Englishman, and he kept hearing incredible tales of the fortune that could be made in California, that golden state, which was still a beacon to dreamers everywhere thanks to the boon of the 1849 Gold Rush. So, just a couple of years after landing in New York, Muybridge moved to San Francisco. For someone involved in publishing, the city by the bay was a great place to be; according to Muybridge biographer Rebecca Solnit, San Francisco, by the early 1850s, was teeming with bookstores, as well as nearly 100 hotels catering to people who came from all over the world to try their hand at striking gold. Muybridge, with a keen sense for business, immediately became a bookseller, with a particular penchant for antiquarian tomes. By 1860, he had achieved a high level of success and was in need of more product to sell at his shop, so after leaving his store in the care of his brother, he boarded a stagecoach bound for St. Louis, where he hoped to board a train to New York before taking passage on a ship back to London to procure books. What was supposed to be a long and probably fairly boring journey would end up being a significant moment in his life, and one that some say could be read as a foreshadowing, if not an outright inspiration, for Muybridge’s ultimate history-making career.
While en route to St. Louis, Muybridge’s stagecoach crashed spectacularly when its brakes failed, injuring every passenger aboard and killing one person. Muybridge himself was thrown from the coach and landed, hitting his head on a rock and causing him to fall into a coma, in which he remained for one week. While comatose, the bookseller was sent to Fort Smith, Arkansas for treatment, and when he awoke there, he experienced a variety of symptoms: confused thinking, an impaired sense of taste and smell, and--most crucially--a severe case of double vision, which worsened over time. Eventually he transferred to New York City for further healthcare, and finally, a year later, he was sufficiently healed enough to undertake his long-delayed trip back to England. But that experience with double vision had greatly affected him--so much so that some have claimed it as a premonition of the work that would later make him world-famous: his photographic motion studies. The associated head injury, it has further been speculated by a neurologist from the University of California, Berkeley,, may also explain Muybridge’s increasingly erratic and emotional behavior--thus possibly even inspiring another crucial period in Muybridge’s biography. But we’ll get to that shortly.
While in London on his book-buying excursion-- which morphed into a five-year-long stay, Muybridge was under the care of a doctor named Sir William Gull, a famed physician whose clients also included Queen Victoria. Scant records exist that document the goings-on of this period in Muybridge’s life except that he took out patents for a couple of inventions: one of which was for a QUOTE ‘improved method of and apparatus for plate printing', unquote, which may have been originally inspired by his work in the book publishing business but may also reflect a burgeoning new interest: photography. Some have suggested that it was Dr. Gull who introduced Muybridge to photography and may have even influenced his career change. By the time that Muybridge returned to the United States in 1867, he was no longer a book merchant and publisher, but marketed himself instead as a photographer. And his fame grew quickly. Muybridge established himself as an artist with a keen eye and technical chops, and though he also offered portrait services, he was especially good at shooting images of landscapes, though, to be fair, he would sometimes tweak his composition in order to achieve the most dramatic effect, even going so far as cutting down trees if he felt that they were spoiling his ideal view (also, side note, this still happens: I once had an artist ask me if I could “relocate a tree” for an outdoor sculpture project. So, yeah). After a landmark shoot where he captured the wild grandeur of the Yosemite Valley, he was a superstar, receiving commissions from all over, including the U.S. Government, the San Francisco Mint, the U.S. Army, and many others. And it was in the midst of this rise that the former governor of California, the famed Leland Stanford, contacted him with a strange request.
Okay. Do you remember the Yanni/Laurel debates of a few years back, or the furor over “The Dress” and whether it was white and gold, or black and blue? Well, in 1872, they had their own version of such a popular debate that inspired impassioned opinions from many. The question? Whether or not all four feet of a horse were, at any point, off the ground at the same time while the horse was mid-trot or gallop. I know. Really intriguing stuff, right? Well, it was to Leland Stanford, who adamantly felt that, yes, at certain points mid-gallop, all four hooves must be off the ground. Our human eyes, though, could not perceive this motion, especially in an animal as speedy as a thoroughbred horse. So he hired Eadweard Muybridge to settle the score.
Why Muybridge, you might ask, when San Francisco was teeming with many other talented photographers, including Carleton Watkins, Isaiah Taber, and others. The answer is simple: that very same year, Muybridge had begun experimenting with the arrangement of a series of cameras, attempting to trigger them one-by-one in order to capture a sensation of movement-- take a person walking down the street for example. The first shot might record a person with their left foot in front, and the next could present the action of picking up the right foot from the back in order to bring it forward in a step. It seems simple to us now, but remember, this was the 1870s- photography was still new, and being able to take multiple shots required multiple cameras. So Muybridge applied this new experimental setup to Leland Stanford’s challenge and spent much of 1872 attempting to perfect his methods, especially in relation to a lightning-quick shutter speed.
But he also approached 1872 with another all-consuming obsession, one that would lead to the end of a man’s life. That’s coming up next- right after this break. Stay with us.
Welcome back to ArtCurious.
Eadweard Muybridge was working intently and seriously on his project for Leland Stanford, aiming to settle the argument once and for all about a horse’s hooves--attempting to prove whether or not all four feet of a horse were, at any point, off the ground at the same time while the horse was mid-trot or gallop. And with his new experiments in stop-motion, ultra-quick photography sequences, it seemed like no man was better suited to answer this question than Muybridge. His initial, early efforts at trying to pin down the answer looked promising. In setting up an array of cameras, twelve in total, and photographing a galloping horse over and over again, it looked like Stanford’s estimation of the horse’s leaping into the air was indeed correct. But in the mid-1870s, Muybridge didn’t have the chance to perfect and 100% confirm this early suspicion, because something else derailed his attention.
In 1872, the same year that he took the job-slash-bet from Leland Stanford, things were on the up-and-up for Muybridge from a personal standpoint. He had met and fallen in love with a young woman named Flora Stone, who, at 21 years old, was 22 years younger than Muybridge. Photography brought the two together, it seemed-- Eadweard met the future Mrs. Muybridge when she was working doing photograph retouching at another nearby studio. That year, they got married-- but things didn’t go so smoothly for the couple. Famously, Muybridge was a bit of an odd duck, a difficult person with a streak of anger and probably a lack of delicacy towards his new wife. So the next year, when the couple became acquainted with a new friend, the situation became even more complicated. In 1873, the Muybridges met a newly-minted theater critic from the San Francisco Post, a former major in the British Army named Harry Larkyns. From all accounts, he was the opposite of Muybridge: where Muybridge was strange and distant, Larkyns was outgoing and charming. Not a whole lot was known about Larkyns’s early life, but it appeared that he came from a wealthy and reputable family in England. His relations with his family, though, had grown estranged due to Harry’s interest in living an adventurous, romantic life, seeking challenges not only in the British Army, with whom he served for six years in India, but also the French service, too. He was a globetrotter who spent his family’s wealth to fund his exploits, and after his military service concluded, he realized he had no way to fund his living other than making do with a number of random jobs: as a translator, a reporter, a circus manager, a mapmaker, and, as when he met Flora, a theater critic. You can see that Larkyns cut quite the figure and was a fascinating person to be around-- and you can further imagine that comparing Larkyns with Muybridge, her husband, was something that Flora Muybridge could not help but do. And in that comparison, her husband came out lacking.
And so it is perhaps not a surprise to note that as Muybridge dug deeper into both his “galloping horse” studies as well as traveling to take more photos of the American northwest, his wife was at home, lonely and looking for a deeper connection with someone. That someone, naturally, was Harry Larkyns.
Over the course of the next year, Muybridge was away from home much of the time, photographing everywhere from Alaska to Nebraska and so many places in between. He occasionally made trips back home to San Francisco, and it was during one of his return visits that Flora announced she was pregnant. In April 1874, the couple welcomed their first child, a boy with the utterly fascinating name of Florado Helios Muybridge. It was surely a happy time for the pair, but one that did not last. At one point, Eadweard was rummaging through his wife’s belongings when he stopped to admire a photograph of their young son. But when he flipped the photo over, he found two words scrawled on the back in his wife’s handwriting: “Little Harry,” the note read. And with that discovery, everything changed suddenly for Muybridge. Was he not the true father of his own son? Was Florado’s dad actually Harry Larkyns?
Some sources note that during this time period, Muybridge confronted the lovers and the situation came to blows between the two men, and several acquaintances of the famed photographer were even concerned that he--Muybridge-- was so devastated as to consider suicide. Muybridge opted instead to exert control over his wife’s life. In order to further separate Flora from Larkyns, Muybridge sent his wife to visit relatives up in Portland, Oregon, thinking that the distance would be enough to shut things down entirely, but he may have forgotten about a little thing called the U.S. Postal service, because upon his wife’s return to the Bay Area, he discovered letters sent between Harry and Flora that confirmed that the pair were still involved with one another. The photographer was livid, filled with such rage that Flora apparently tipped off her lover, and Larkyns fled the city. But Eadweard Muybridge was quickly on his tail, and what happened next was such a major scandal that it was all over the newspapers. I’ll let the San Francisco Bulletin’s article from October 19, 1874, lead us through. The article, titled “A STARTLING TRAGEDY. Chevalier Harry Larkyns Shot Dead by Edward J. Muybridge, the Photographer- The Sequel to a Scandalous Intrigue,” reads in part as follows: quote, “Considerable sensation was created In the city yesterday morning by the receipt of intelligence from Calistoga of the deliberate killing of Major Harry Larkyns of this city, by Edward J. Muybridge, the well known photographer. The cause leading to the act of murder was the discovery of convincing proof by Muybridge of the infidelity of his wife with Larkyns, and immediately thereupon he set out to avenge his wrongs, leaving the city in pursuit of Larkyns on Saturday, knowing him to be in the vicinity of Calistoga, engaged In preparing maps of the mines in that locality. He reached Calistoga at 8 o'clock in the evening, and without stopping for food or rest he went in search of his intended victim with a horse and buggy. Larkyns had returned from Pine Flat on Saturday evening and stopped at the Yellow Jacket mine, eleven miles from Calistoga, intending to pass the night there. Thither Muybridge traced him, and reaching the spot at about 11 o'clock at night, he sent word to the Major that he wanted to see him. Larkyns was confronted by Muybridge, who, in words of terrible import, said, "This is the reply to the letter you sent to my wife,'' and immediately discharged a revolver. The aim was well taken and deadly. Larkyns had no opportunity to defend himself or to utter a word. He ran a few steps and fell a corpse, with a bullet through his heart. Putting his pistol up, Muybridge surrendered himself to the Superintendent of the mine, and was forthwith conveyed to Calistoga, where he was given in charge to the authorities. Muybridge offered no further resistance, and expressed his gratification on learning that his victim was dead.” unquote
Fast-forwarding one year, Eadweard Muybridge’s murder trial was in full-force, and San Francisco was enraptured, just as they had been when learning about the sordid details of his wife’s affair and her lover’s subsequent murder. In 1875 at the start of the trial, Muybridge made an insanity plea, claiming that he wasn’t in his right mind when he killed Larkyns, which--to be honest--can’t we really say that about anyone who murders, kinda? Okay, anyhow, at some point during the trial he and his lawyers changed tacks, and Muybridge changed his defense to quote-unquote “justifiable homicide,” or killing someone for a very good reason. What is so telling about the late 19th century--and how women, especially wives, were looked upon-- is that this defense actually worked. Muybridge was acquitted of murder, with the jury determining that, yeah, it totally makes sense for you to kill someone if your wife is having an affair with him. Reasonable, right? And thus, Muybridge went free, even though he confessed to the killing and had turned himself in to the authorities quickly after.
During the trial, Muybridge was unable to experiment with his newly-innovating motion photography techniques, so when the trial ended, he was ready to begin again and to confirm his discoveries, once and for all, for Leland Stanford. But first, he needed a change of pace and scenery, so he moved to Central America for about nine months, photographing incredible landscapes of Panama, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and beyond. When he returned to the United States, he jumped into his old methods, working first in a studio in Palo Alto before moving east to the University of Pennsylvania. His improvements in the late 1870s included not only the quick shutter speed that he had pioneered before his murder trial, but also speedier processing times for film emulsions. By 1878, under Leland Stanford’s watchful gaze, Muybridge was able to repeat his previous experiments about that long-debated question about a horse’s hooves. On June 15 of that year, the photographer made history at what was then called the Palo Alto Stock Farm, which is now part of the campus of Stanford University. Along a horse track there, Muybridge placed multiple large cameras, each with a shutter that would be triggered by a thread when someone-in this case, a horse--touched it upon passing by. That day, Leland Stanford’s horse, Sallie Gardner, galloped on by, and click-click-click-went the shutters of Muybridge’s glass-plate cameras. Here, finally, was a series of images that provided proof, once and for all, that horses in gallop do, at specific times in their gait, have all four hooves off the ground, effortlessly floating for a split second. This sequence of photographs was so revolutionary that not only did it solve that much-debated popular question of the day, but it captured the public imagination-- Muybridge’s images were so fascinating that they were even published in Scientific American and other magazines of the day And when Muybridge copied his negatives into silhouettes printed onto glass discs, which were housed in a circular device that, when cranked by hand, would spin quickly in a circle. When viewed through a portal, the discs spun so quickly that it gave the effect of continuous motion-- Sallie Gardner, perpetually galloping into eternity, as long as your arm muscles could hold out. This machine, called the zoopraxiscope, is considered by many to be one of the first movie projectors, the intermediary step between the still photograph and the films that we know and love today. And it’s funny to think how directly this experiment-- the Stanford horse-trot debate-- affected the development of motion pictures, because the world’s earliest film--the first real movie ever-- is practically a copy of Muybridge’s images. This film, produced in 1888 by Louis Le Prince, a French artist, was called The Roundhay Garden Scene and is the first selection of film to show a horse galloping with a jockey on its back. And yes, in the surviving stills from Le Prince’s film, you can indeed see the horse’s hooves hovering gently off the ground.
For me, this story is all about the what-could-have-been factor. What would have happened if Eadweard Muybridge was convicted of murdering his wife’s lover, Harry Larkyns? Stuck in jail for who knows how long, it’s certain he would not have been able to innovate the way he did upon his return from his trip to Central America, reuniting with Stanford and continuing his pop culture scientific experiments from the years prior. Possibly the question about whether or not a horse’s hooves ever left the ground all at once may have died out, the way that no one really thinks about whether or not The Dress was blue and black or white and gold anymore these days. Or maybe Leland Stanford would have found another photographer to take up his assignment. But even then, Muybridge’s work with Stanford led directly to the invention of his zoopraxiscope, which begat the first true motion picture ten years later. And it brings up a big what-if. Would we have gotten there anyway? My answer is yes, probably. But who knows for sure? Who knows if Muybridge was this single history-changing person? So how different might history been, then, if Muybridge was found guilty of the crime he confessed to committing?
Thank you for listening to the ArtCurious Podcast. This episode was written, produced, and narrated by me, Jennifer Dasal, with additional research help by Joce Mallin. Our theme music is by Alex Davis at alexdavismusic.com, our logo is by Dave Rainey at daveraineydesign.com, and social media help is by Emily Crockett and Caroline Haller. Our production and editorial services are provided by Kaboonki. Video. Content. Ideas. Learn more at kaboonki.com. Additional editing is by Hannah Roberts. The ArtCurious Podcast is sponsored primarily by Anchorlight. Anchorlight is a creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle. please visit Anchorlightraleigh.com.
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Check back in two weeks as we continue to explore the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in the true crime realm of art history.
