Here’s a curious fact: if a painting shows horses galloping, you can date the painting based on how its horses are depicted to be running.
Before the 19th century, artists were unsure of how horses actually trotted or gal
Here’s a curious fact: if a painting shows horses galloping, you can date the painting based on how its horses are depicted to be running.
Before the 19th century, artists were unsure of how horses actually trotted or galloped. Artists would often show horses moving with all four hooves extended off the ground, as if they were flying through the air.
This painting by Théodore Géricault gives a good example. Galloping horses never have all four legs extended as shown.
But then someone came around who would show once and for all how horses ran.
A man named Eadweard Muybridge got a photographic assignment in 1872 to study the way horses move.
Much debate circulated at the time about how horses moved, which was difficult to discern with the naked eye. 