A folio containing plates by pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) is to sell in Edinburgh.

It consists of 95 photographs that show the sequences of human and animal movement for which Muybridge is best known.

Muybridge photographed animals from the Philadelphia Zoo 

The full, rather unwieldy, title of the work is: “Animal Locomotion. An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements 1872-1885”.

It was executed with the help of the University of Pennsylvania, with many of the animals borrowed from the Philadelphia Zoo.  

This particular folio has previously belonged to both the Royal Scottish Museum and the Museum of Edinburgh.

It’s valued at £30,000-40,000 ($36,432-48,576) ahead of the January 11 auction at Lyon & Turnbull.

Muybridge was a hugely eccentric figure in the world of early photography.

He was born Edward Muggeridge in London, but changed his name to Eadweard Muybridge after concluding that this was its probable Anglo Saxon equivalent.  

He spent much of his life in America, where he produced some of the first photographs of the great western national parks.

Famously, in 1874 he shot his wife’s lover.

This briefly held up his photographic studies, although he was acquitted on the grounds of justifiable homicide.

He blamed the incident on a head injury he sustained in a catastrophic stagecoach accident in 1860.

Folios of Muybridge’s work, particularly the motion studies, rarely come to auction and are in high demand. Another made $75,000 at Sotheby’s in 2015.

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