Thomas Eakins himself is experimenting with multiple-image…

Thomas Eakins himself is experimenting with multiple-image photography of moving athletes and animals by 1884.

In this year, Eadweard Muybridge, his work acclaimed by scientists and artists alike, returns from a successful European tour to continue his photographic motion studies of motion, beginning a series under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania.

These consist of photographs of various activities of human figures, clothed and naked, which are to form a visual compendium of human movements for the use of artists and scientists.

Eakins marries one of his pupils, Susan Macdowell, in 1884.

As a corollary to his interest in anatomy, Eakins is fascinated with locomotion: human and animal figures in motion.

A commission in 1879 to paint Fairman Rogers driving his four-in-hand coach through Fairmount Park in Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art) leads him to an intensive study of horse anatomy, and he makes a number of sculpted wax sketches of horses in motion.

He develops a serious interest in sculpture (an aspect of his art that will only became appreciated much later).

His interest in locomotion had led to familiarity with the experiments in sequential photography being made in California by Muybridge.