Mr. Muybridge at the Royal Society

Portrait of Eadweard Muybridge, an exhibitor at the Royal Society’s conversazione, or soirée, at Burlington House, London, on the evening of 8 May 1889. Muybridge is shown standing in formal evening dress, leaning against a rostrum with his left elbow. He holds a lecturing pointer stick in his right hand. Behind, a projected lantern slide illustration of a photograph of a horse and jockey in motion.

Full page cover illustration from the Illustrated London News, 25 May 1889. Captioned below: ‘MR. MUYBRIDGE SHOWING HIS INSTANTANEOUS PHOTOGRAPHS OF ANIMAL MOTION AT THE ROYAL SOCIETY.’ The print is signed lower left: ‘T. WALTER WILSON’. Lower right: R. TAYLOR’

Muybridge lectured at 10 o’clock during the evening conversazione. The presentation was billed as: ‘Projections by the electric lantern of automatic electro-photographs, exposed at regular intervals of time, illustrating the consecutive phases of bipedal locomotion, as synchronously viewed from two or more points of sight, exhibited by Eadweard Muybridge’.

Richard Taylor (active 1871-1908) British wood engraver. Thomas Walter Wilson (1851-1912) British illustrator.