More Science from an Easy ChairLankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
History
More Science from an Easy Chair
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
Natural history; Science
It may, perhaps, be suggested (and, indeed, has been), that it is the
"blurred" or "fused" picture produced by the successive poses of the
galloping horse's legs in one-tenth of a second that the painter ought
to imitate on his canvas. In support of this notion we have the fact
that the rapidly running wheels of a coach or of a gun-carriage (as in
the pictures by Wouwerman) are represented by artists, not with the
twelve or fourteen spokes which we know to be there--and would be
photographed as separate things in an exposure of the fortieth of a
second--but as a blurred haze of some fifty or more indistinct
"spokes." In this case it undoubtedly results that the observer of the
picture is satisfied and receives the mental impression or illusion of
a rapid rotation of the wheel. I have tried the experiment with
instantaneous photographs of the galloping horse, and I get three
results: first, no combination of successive phases occupying
one-tenth of a second gives anything resembling the "flying gallop" of
the racing plates (the Mycenaean and Stubbsian pose), or any other
conventional pose; second, no combination of successive instantaneous
photographs limited to ten second gives any pose which satisfies the
judgment and suggests a movement like the gallop; third, the
combination which comes nearest to satisfying the judgment as being a
natural appearance, but does not quite succeed in doing so, is one
formed by the fusion of figs. 2 and 3 of Pl. I. This gives all four
legs off the ground, drawn up or flexed beneath the horse's body, as
in Morot's picture of the sabre-charge at Resonville.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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