The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand

[5] In 1877, Muybridge published an instantaneous photograph of the racehorse "Occident", showing for the first time just when all four hooves of a galloping horse left the ground.

On June 19, 1878, at a racetrack in Palo Alto, California, Muybridge positioned a row of 12 cameras set close together at regular intervals, each with a trip wire crossing the track.

When the racehorse "Sallie Gardner" galloped past the cameras she tripped the wires, resulting in a short but regular sequence of instantaneous photographs shot close to 1/25 of a second apart.

[6] According to Eakins biographer Gordon Hendricks, seven years before Sallie Gardner was published, Rogers had attempted to photograph his own horses in motion using a camera with a shutter that rapidly opened and closed (like a Venetian blind).

It is believed that while in Newport that Eakins created wax models of Rogers's horses, their poses based on another set of Muybridge photographs — the "Abe Edgington" Series (1878), showing a trotter pulling a sulky.

In the sketch, he blurred the spokes of the wheels, the traditional way for artists to indicate motion, but this conflicted with his intention to show an instantaneous view of the hooves.

He seems to have gone back and forth about this — artist Joseph Pennell reported that Eakins at first "drew every spoke in the wheels, and the whole affair looked as if it had been instantaneously petrified.

"[12] In the end, Eakins made the same compromise of logic as in the sketch: freezing the horses' hooves, but blurring the spokes of the coach's wheels.

The reviews were respectful, but generally unfavorable, noting the inconsistency between the hooves and spokes, and using this point as a springboard to lecture about the superiority of Art over Science.