The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand [SEP] creator
The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand
The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand (originally titled A May Morning in the Park) is an 1879-80 painting by Thomas Eakins. It shows Fairman Rogers driving a coaching party in his four-in-hand carriage through Philadelphia's Fairmount Park. It is thought to be the first painting to examine precisely, through systematic photographic analysis, how horses move.
"The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand" is in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum
friends driving through Philadelphia's Fairmount Park. In 1882, he promoted Eakins to director of PAFA's art school.
Rogers's favorite mare, "Josephine," the lead horse in "The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand", died in 1882. He donated the carcass to PAFA, where Eakins and his students studied and dissected it. Based on this process, Eakins modeled three écorché statuettes to serve as teaching tools for equine musculature.
In 1883, Rogers invited the animal-locomotion photographer Eadweard Muybridge