Was motion blur ever used in art before the advent of photography? I think that people must have always known that fast-moving objects cause blurs and after-images — easily observed by waving your hand in front of your face — but I’m not aware of any depictions of them in old paintings or drawings. Come to think of it, I don’t recall seeing even simple motion lines in old drawings or engravings.
Motion blur was never used in the art of any culture before photography, so far as I know. If there is any example I’d be interested to see it, but I doubt it.
An interesting case to compare is perspective in art. Perspective seems obvious to us, but it took many centuries for artists to understand and begin to use perspective, starting in 15th century Italy.
Interestingly another way motion is depicted, where the moving object appears to lean forwards and seems to give an impression of straining to go faster, can also be attributed to photography. In this case it is the use of focal plane shutters. Check out the wheels in these images of early race cars:
I’m not sure that it’s actually a question of artists understanding perspective, so much as of appreciating it. An artist can understand perspective just fine, while still not considering it to have any artistic merit. The same may also be true of motion blur.
EDIT: ticker, an even more extreme such effect can be seen when using an iPhone to photograph a spinning propeller.
Fascinating! I’ve often seen this effect in cartoons but had no idea that it was reproducing a photographic effect.
I wonder, then, if there was no motion blur, or motion lines, or shearing, then what devices or conventions did pre-photographic artists use to convey the feeling of motion?
“Dynamic representation” – hair and clothes and props blown back/out, dust kicked up, rippled water surfaces, objects in unstable positions that you know will have to move in a particular direction, people bracing and leaning on the ship/vehicle, musculature flexed in exaggerated poses, etc.
Five stag heads in the Nave region of Lascaux cave might represent a single stag in different stages of motion. Probably from around 21,000 years ago
http://nautil.us/issue/11/light/early-humans-made-animated-art
I think motion lines were probably used but I can’t find any examples in the pre-photographic era (roughly after 1830, but more generally after about 1860). There were no cars, no planes, no super-heroes, so no real need to artistically depict fast motion in most everyday life.
However there were locomotives, canons firing and sword fights, so you’d think some pre-1830 illustration would at least use motion lines.
Part of the problem may have been printing technology. Line-oriented pen-and-ink art could transfer to lead printing plates, but I’m not sure a gradient blur effect would work. However they could have used motion lines.
This is in the photographic era, but here is an example of motion lines from a 1908 illustration by John. R. Neill for the book Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, by L. Frank Baum: https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-GsPPv6t/0/XL/i-GsPPv6t-XL.jpg
Neill was influenced by Joseph Clement Coll (1881-1921) who in turn was influenced by Daniel Vierge (1851-1904). They all made great looking pen-and-ink art, but I don’t see any use of motion lines. It may have been artistically considered cartoonish.
I knew exactly what photo I was going to see before clicking your first link – see my username for a clue, haha.
The closest I can think of would be depictions of gunsmoke or fire from cannons or firearms - I’ve seen that in illustrations, paintings and woodcuts from quite far back, including this example from c.1400AD, this famous image of the Siege of Orleans c.1493AD, and this picture from Ming-Dynasty China showing a cannon being fired.
Also, here is a Japanese woodcut from around 1275AD showing a grenade or rocket weapon exploding during one of the Mongol invasions, with motion lines in place.
Interestingly, in all the old pictures I’ve seen, arrows are always shown frozen in mid-air.
What the OP is asking, i think no.
And i believe the reason is the image that is trying to be represented only exists in photography.
With no photograph the artist would paint something exactly as he is seeing it, and the human eye does not blur and smear images like a moving object on a slow shutter speed camera.
Oh yes, you can not focus on something, and its a blur, but when you say hey what is that, and focus on it, now it isnt a blur.
The artist can do that, the camera can not.
The human eye also does not have issues quickly jumping around in focal depth.
We can also quickly do a sharp focus on foreground and background and keep going back and forth, and paint both in clear focus, the camera does not, it sees one or the other.
Guess it is a case of Art mimicking Art mimicking life?
@Martini Enfield
My guess would be because the rocket/grenade actually has a smoke and flame trail visible like fireworks do, and arrows do not? and so the artist is simply depicting exactly what he saw?
Interesting question, I would guess that neither motion blur nor shallow Depth of field predate photography.
Interesting that Min-Dynasty picture has the flames going ahead of the cannon ball rather than trailing it.
This is a good point, but there are some very common fast-moving objects that it the eye simply cannot focus on when moving quickly. Spoked wheels, for example. I’ve seen plenty of moving chariots, carriages, wagons, and other spoked wheels in pre-photographic art, but don’t recall any depictions being blurred, even though that’s exactly how they’d appear to the artist.
As bob++ mentioned, there are ancient cave paintings that used multiple images that probably, but not definitely, were used to depict motion. In addition to the stag heads he linked to, there is the rhinoceros here, the horse heads here, and the lion heads here. Not exactly motion blur, but similar.
JMW Turner’s paintings show a blurring of waves, clouds and weather, especially in his later work (1830s and 1840s), but concrete objects tend to be painted as in a “frozen moment”.
Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps (1812)
The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (1834)
[Rain, Steam and Speed: The Great Western Railway (1844)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain,_Steam_and_Speed_–_The_Gly?
reat_Western_Railway)
blink, human freeze frame 
But i honestly do not think the artists are doing that.
I think it’s more a case of artistic license.
The artist knows what the spokes look like and is simply choosing to freeze them in time
how they actually are and not how perceived.
Even paintings of american western stage coaches are all depicted with spokes frozen as if shot with high speed camera, yet depict dust trails from the wheels and horses manes blowing about.
Maybe it was simply thought the blurry spoke does not look nice, or again the simple fact the artist knows what it really looks like, and so paints it that way.
Now if we had an object the artist had absolutely no knowledge of, so could not know what it looked like sitting still, but artists don’t seem to paint those things.
Even now days, i dont think motion blurring is super popular in most paintings or similar art. Comics and such yes, portraits not so much.
Artists still seem to prefer capturing everything in perfect detail as if frozen in time by a camera that can focus every distance clearly at the same time.
Something a photograph will never do.
A simple pinhole camera has near infinite depth-of-field.
And near-zero speed.
I sometimes get sub 20 second exposures with mine 