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Magazine & UpdatesOn this page: Muybridge Book: Donisthorpe revisited: Kinora reels extraNEW PUBLICATION, 2004 Eadweard Muybridge: The Kingston Museum Bequest . On 6 September 2004, Kingston Museum and The Projection Box published a catalogue / book of essays on Muybridge. Kingston Museum (Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England) holds the Muybridge Bequest, a collection of material donated by Muybridge and acquired on his death in 1904. The material at Kingston relates to Muybridge's lectures, and in particular 'Animal Locomotion in Relation to Design in Art', in which he expounded on the fanciful attitudes of animal movement as shown in paintings, sculpture and drawing since the earliest times, contrasting these images with his instantaneous photographic sequences of actual animal and human movement. The collection includes: * over 2000 unique glass plates, most of which are lantern slide positives (including his lecture slides of art subjects). * 67 of the known total of 71 surviving zoopraxiscope discs, all of which are unique. Approximately half are hand-painted, the others being photographically printed from drawings, and hand coloured. * Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope machine, and his biunial magic lantern projector - both unique. * Muybridge's own scrapbook. * Collotype plates from Animal Locomotion. * Two examples of the very rare Attitudes of Animals in Motion album. * A rare copy of the San Francisco Panorama. The publication includes: * a listing of all Bequest items. * Illustrations selected from his lecture slides of paintings, etc. * Illustrations from all 67 discs, with all of the coloured discs reproduced in colour. * Several essays, including a 30,000 word essay explaining in detail, for the first time, the actual nature of his projected images. * Significant newly-researched information on his European lecture tours. A very considerable proportion of the information, both text and images, is new (previously unpublished), and the original research relating to Muybridge's art lectures and screened images will illuminate this neglected aspect of his work. 159 pp, including 24 page colour section. Hardback. Price £35 post paid (UK mainland) from The Projection Box.
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Review: "The [centenary] is also being marked by a work of permanent value. Titled The Kingston Museum Bequest, it is not only a superb catalogue of the museum's Muybridge collection, but also details the life of this remarkable man and the lasting influence of the techniques he invented. It is the result of many years research by its editor, Stephen Herbert, and his co-writers, Marta Braun, Paul Hill, former curator of Kingston Museum and a noted Muybridge specialist, and Anne McCormack, Head of Kingston Museum and Heritage Service. The book has more than 200 illustrations, including the complete San Francisco Panorama, and is a perfect gift for, among others, film and photography buffs, local history enthusiasts, art historians, magic lanternists and horse lovers." Surrey Comet UPDATES: (Wordsworth Donisthorpe, followed by Kinora Reels)Wordsworth Donisthorpe Revisited
Photo: Edmund Seal Donisthorpe (left) and friends, c.1900. Son of Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Edmund entered the film business, producing 'singing films' from 1910, and championing his father's pioneering work. (Courtesy A. Hughes).
Just before the publication of Industry, Liberty and a Visionin November 1998, an evening presentation based on the book was given at the Museum of the Moving Image, London. Mo Heard (who co-researched the book) and I presented the story with slides and narration, and actor John Witts played Wordsworth Donisthorpe with conviction in several intermittent vignettes. Audience reaction was very favourable, and the show was repeated at the Nottingham Silent Film Weekend early in 1999.
Since the publication of the book, some new facts have come to light concerning film pioneers Wordsworth Donisthorpe and William Carr Crofts. In 1999 , we received an e-mail enquiry from a couple who had been searching the net for details of Donisthorpe. Our enquirers had inherited some family photographs, and several were of the Donisthorpes - known to have been 'friends of the family' in the early years of the 20th century. We were fascinated to see hitherto unknown photographs of WD and his sons and their associates. More interesting still, they were pictured in the grounds of 'The Willows', where the family had lived for several years around 1900. Enquiries had located the house, and the present owners kindly agreed to meet with us, and show us around. So Mo and I met up with the couple who had been diligently searching out the Donisthopre connections, for a very pleasant summer Sunday lunch in Kintbury, followed by a visit to the evocative former home of WD. The family of the present owners had bought the house from Donisthorpe himself in 1905 and showed us the deeds bearing his name. We also saw the nearby building that WD had built as a boxing ring (!) and our friends were rowed out onto the lake to experience a few lazy moments of the 'messing about in boats' pictured in some of the old photographs. The visit was a most enjoyable and entirely unexpected spin-off from our library-bound research.
Some new, unrelated information later turned up that could shed some light on what started Donisthorpe's initial interest in moving images. Whilst reading a biography of physicist James Clerk Maxwell for a different project, I discovered that he had been responsible for setting questions for the Mathematics Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge in the late 1860s, and had been examiner for several years. In fact, he had examined the students in 1869, the year that Wordsworth Donisthorpe graduated. (Donisthorpe was a Maths Wrangler at Trinity). Maxwell's weeks at the college during the examination period would have included lecturing; and it was also in 1869 that Maxwell revealed his modified zoetrope, with a wreath of lenses instead of slots. This device was the first moving picture machine to use a form of optical compensation; each image appeared to stop very briefly, making it sharper than was the case with a conventional zoetrope. And in later years, Donisthorpe's film camera and projector used a unique but theory-related mechanical method to achieve movement 'compensation'. Although the evidence of a connection is circumstantial, it seems highly unlikely that the above events were not linked.
Another fact emerged more recently. One of Donisthorpe's fellow students at Trinity College was Francis (Frank) Darwin, third son of Charles. It seems likely that WD kept in touch, since Francis married Crofts' sister Ellen in 1883. From a letter published in a new book of E-J. Marey correspondence, Lettres d'Etienne-Jules Marey à Georges Demeny 1880-1894, we now know that Francis Darwin visited Marey in Paris in the early summer of 1889. On July 2nd he wrote to Marey, "I thought it very kind of you to allow me to see you at work...". That summer Marey was shooting 'films' on both paper and, very probably, experimental celluloid. Weeks after Francis Darwin's letter, Donisthorpe and Crofts patented their Kinesigraph film camera. Marey must surely have described or shown his camera and/or its results to Frank Darwin during the visit. Did an account of Marey's progress in any way influence Frank's brother-in-law W. C. Crofts, and Donisthorpe? Again circumstantial - but an intriguing possibility.
A 1998 book entitled The Photographic Flash - a concise illustrated history,by Pierre Bron and Philip L. Condax (Bron Elektronik AG, Switzerland 1998) contrasts Donisthorpe's efforts with the successful living pictures of Ottomar Anschutz, commenting: "To some it is given to dream new things, and to others it is given to make dreams real."
Finally, I had a phone call recently from an elderly member of a branch of the Donisthorpe family who informed me that the family motto was 'Fortune Favours the Strong'. How descriptive of Wordsworth Donisthorpe's political position! KINORA
REELS UPDATE (OCTOBER 1999)
Numbered reels are listed in numerical order, using the last three
digits only. (Some numbers have a prefix '1' , '4' or '7', the purpose
of which is not known). Some numbers have been used more than once,
for different subjects, and where there already exists an entry in
the booklet under a number, the new entry is identified here as (different).
If you know of any reels not in this listing or the Kinora booklet,
please send details for inclusion in future updates.
Additions to listing of Kinora Reels in: The Kinora : Motion Pictures
For The Home 1896-1914
2 baby girl in tub washing doll [brs]. AMATEUR
The following reels are of amateur origin (probably taken on a Kinora
895 Two young child ren playing UN-NUMBERED REELS The following reels are not numbered in any way, but have been given a number for this catalogue supplement.
UN65 Feeding pigeons, St. Mark's square, Venice (W.K-L. Dickson?)
[brs]. LUMIERE REELS
The following reels are marked 'Lumiere' (all with brass cores). The
series number, where given, is the same as the original Lumiere catalogue
number. The first reel listed is un-numbered, and has been assigned
a number for this catalogue supplement.
UN-LUM1 Card Party. EXTRA DETAILS OF REELS LISTED IN BOOKLET
44 (train no.727) is same as 1507 (but not interleaved) |
animation: Charl Lucassen 