h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Visiting a castle on Arran (Scotland) recently, I noticed all the paintings of horses galloping depicted them as flying with all their legs in the air.

I know that the prevailing thought in early days was that when a horse was galloping , either all its legs was raised or it was pushing of with all four. I also think that that this was dispelled when high speed photography showed the true movement of horses galloping.

Does anybody know if this was the case and when this was discovered and by whom?

Thanks, BD2.

The person who did the photographs was a man called Eadweard Muybridge, and the photographs proved that at one point during a gallop, horses do lift all its legs off the ground at once.

There's something about it here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/muybridge_eadweard.shtml

Thanks!

Obviously i got it all back to front and now you mention it I seem to remember a recreation of this experiment on television some time ago.

BD2.

I went to see "Stubbs And The Horse" at the National Gallery a couple of weeks ago, and in his early paintings of horse races and hunts this is how he painted the horses. It seemed to be the accepted way before photography proved otherwise.

I think he kinda figured that it looked wrong though, as he stopped painting horses on the move fairly early on, and did them in standing groups. And usually side on at that, as he was rubbish at perspective too.

RF

Having looked at the image on that link, they only seem to lift all their legs off when they are underneath them, rather than when they are all stretched out.

From what I understand, the results from photographs were more or less ignored, as it just didn't look right on a painting.

It's like jumping up off all four limbs at once.I have great respect for horses.I could never do that.

Horses were always drawn with all four legs off the ground, stretched out (front legs stretched forward, back legs backward). When photos showed this to be wrong, painters started painting the horses in the correct arrangement with all four legs tucked in under the horse and off the ground, but it just didn't look right, so in modern pictures, they use a sort of a compromise with one or two legs stretched out.

Well, there's also a compromise position, which painters don't seem to have mastered, as there are intermediate positions for the legs between *all tucked up under the body* and *stupidly looking like they're trying to fly*.

But strangely, people stopped painting horses at about the same time.

RF

Why bother to paint, when you can just take a photo?

Yeah, and then use the painting function in any decent photo editing programme