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Emptying a Bucket of Water
About the Artwork
Eadweard J. Muybridge initially used horses to capture motion as separate slices of time faster than the human eye could perceive them, then moved on to study other animal and human movements. Everyday activities, like emptying a bucket of water, were broken down and sequenced back-to-back. This series was commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania and intended to diagnose dysfunction in human movement by allowing each consecutive action to be studied in isolation. The university’s desire for distribution called for the use of collotype. The process had been recently improved to the point where editions of up to 1,000 were possible, making it an attractive option for publishers.
Provenance
(Laurence Miller Gallery, New York, NY) October 19, 1992: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Signs of Affection: Gifts Honoring the Museum's 75th Anniversary. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 27, 1992-January 3, 1993). The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA), Cleveland, OH (June 9-August 20, 2006). Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 24-September 16, 2007). Photographs in Ink. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 20, 2022-April 2, 2023).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Eadweard J. Muybridge (American, 1830–1904)
- Date
- 1887
- Medium
- collotype
- Dimensions
- Image: 22.5 x 34 cm (8 7/8 x 13 3/8 in.); Paper: 47.4 x 60.4 cm (18 11/16 x 23 3/4 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 in.)
- Type
- Photograph
- Classification
- Photograph
- Department
- Photography
- Credit line
- Gift of Laurence Miller Gallery, New York, in honor of Evan H. Turner
- Accession no.
- 1992.220
More by Eadweard J. Muybridge in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 7, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00000378
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