Watson
and the Shark
by John Singleton Copley
1778
184 x 230 cm
Watson and the Shark was inspired by an event that took place in Havana, Cuba,
in 1749. Fourteen-year-old Brook Watson, an orphan serving as a crew member on
a trading ship, was attacked by a shark while swimming alone in the harbor. His
shipmates, who had been waiting on board to escort their captain ashore, launched
a valiant rescue effort.
Copley chose to depict the moment of highest dramatic
intensity -- the instant just prior to the third, presumably fatal, attack. Viewers
had no way of knowing that the lad would be plucked from the jaws of death by
his stalwart companions.
Brook Watson, a young sailor out for a swim, was
attacked by a shark and saved by his shipmates. The shark bit off part of Watson's
leg, but he recovered and went on to live a well-documented, one-legged life as
a merchant and politician in London, and eventually served a term as mayor from
1796-97. It is likely that Watson commissioned the painting from Copley.
“Was it not for preserving the resemblance of particular
persons,” Copley complained about colonial America, “painting would not be known
in the place.” He dreamed of working in England’s more cosmopolitan artistic environment
and of making “history paintings,” those images of religious, mythological, or
historical events that were traditionally considered the apex of artistic achievement.
In 1774 Copley left America and began a forty-year career in London. Watson
and the Shark, his first large-scale history painting, depicts the heroic
rescue of English merchant Brook Watson (1735–1807) who, as a young cabin boy,
lost a leg to a shark while swimming in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. Watson
and the Shark is an astonishing achievement for an artist who had previously
painted only portraits