John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, 1778 (original) (raw)

John Singleton Copley’s dramatic rendering of a shark attacking 14-year-old Brook Watson caused a sensation when it was exhibited at London’s Royal Academy in 1778. The pictured attack had occurred some 30 years earlier. Watson, an orphan, had unwisely decided to take a dip from a skiff while the ship on which he was crewing docked in Havana Harbor. A shark attacked him, biting his right leg and pulling him under. The boy surfaced briefly before the shark dragged him under a second time, severing his right foot. By the time Watson surfaced again, his mates had nearly reached him. Copley depicts the boy’s climactic rescue: just as the shark zeroed in for its third strike, a determined crewmate armed with a boat hook drove it away.

Copley, an American artist who moved to London amid the tensions of the Revolutionary War, here takes the pictorial representation of terror to new heights. The injured Watson’s deathly pale body rises from the depths, naked and vulnerable, with blood swirling around his leg. As the huge shark’s gaping jaws close in, Watson looks back in shock and grasps futilely for the lifeline cast by a West African crewman, whose prominent position in the picture and sympathetic rendering were extraordinary for the time. Two shipmates stretch desperately to reach the boy flailing in the turbulent waters. The faces of the wind-whipped crewmen—derived from models of emotional expression developed by 18th-century French artist Charles LeBrun—convincingly register a range of responses: contempt (the harpooner); dread (the sailor at far left); compassion (the West African); and astonishment (the older sailor).

The sailors' expressions are believed to have been modeled after engravings by seventeenth-century French artist Charles LeBrun, who published an influential book of facial expressions that inspired artists for the next three centuries.

John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark (detail), 1778. Inset images: Charles Le Brun, Dread, Astonishment, Contempt , three engravings from Conférence de M. Le Brun sur l'expression générale et particulière, Paris, E. Picard, 1698. The West African sailor (detail).

Copley imparted a broader meaning to the scene by casting Watson’s rescue as a then-modern tale of salvation, as it was viewed by Watson, who went on to a successful business and political career and very likely commissioned the painting. The harpooner is portrayed as a secular version of Saint Michael defeating the devil or of Saint George fighting the dragon, two legends often depicted in traditional painting. The shark here incarnates evil, its open jaws recalling the gaping mouth of hell. The boat, too, appears to be modeled after those in earlier representations of the New Testament’s miraculous “draught of fishes.” Such allusions to religion and art served to make a scene otherwise deemed too minor, sensationalist, and contemporary into a fitting subject for history painting. Watson eventually bequeathed the painting of his adolescent triumph over adversity to a London school for disadvantaged youth, believing it would offer moral inspiration.

Images of Saint Michael, Saint George,
and the "draught of fishes"

Images related to Copley's "Watson and the Shark" in the National Gallery of Art collection

Albrecht Dürer, Saint Michael Fighting the Dragon, probably c. 1496/1498 (published 1511), woodcut, Rosenwald Collection, 1980.45.456.rr

Images related to Copley's "Watson and the Shark" in the National Gallery of Art collection

Giulio Romano, Saint Michael, c. 1527/1528, pen and brown ink, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1973.5.1

Images related to Copley's "Watson and the Shark" in the National Gallery of Art collection

Israhel van Meckenem, Saint George and the Dragon, c. 1465/1470, engraving on laid paper, Gift of the 50th Anniversary Gift Committee, 1991.97.1

A man wearing armor, sitting astride a cream-white horse, drives a long lance down at a lizard-like dragon as a woman kneels with her hands in prayer in the landscape beyond in this vertical painting. Both people have pale skin and thin, gold halos floating above their heads. At the center of the composition, the man faces our left in profile as he looks down at the creature. The man has a straight nose and honey-brown hair under his gold-trimmed, pewter-gray helmet. Armor covers his entire body, and a celestial-blue cape billows behind him from where it fastens around his neck. A narrow, indigo-blue and gold band is tied around his left calf, and is inscribed with the word “HONI.” A black sword hangs from his left side. The horse is white with a silvery-white mane and tail. It rears on its hind legs as it turns its head to look at us with hazel-brown eyes. The horse wears a blue saddle and bridle, the same color as the man’s cape, trimmed with gold. A strap around the horse’s neck is painted in gold with the name, “RAPHELLO.” The rider thrusts his foot into the stirrup we can see as he plunges a lance down at the dragon under the horse’s front feet. The dragon has tawny brown skin with a mint green, dog-like head. It grips the earth with clawed feet as at pushes at the lance with one front foot. It twists its long, snake-like neck to look at the man with dark eyes. The dragon opens its pointed snout to show its teeth, and bat-like wings splay out. A tall outcropping over a cave rises along the left edge of the composition, behind the dragon. In a field a little farther back, to our right, the woman kneels with her body angled to our left. She tilts her head away from us and gazes past the man and horse. She has a straight nose, pale pink, bow-shaped lips, and her blond hair is pulled back in a bun. She wears a ruby-red dress and a sheer white wrap around her shoulders and across her arms. Around the woman, straw-yellow hills with bands of pine-green trees roll into the distance. Two terracotta-orange towers rise from a row of trees along the horizon. A few taller trees are outlined against the baby-blue sky, which lightens toward the horizon.

Images related to Copley's "Watson and the Shark" in the National Gallery of Art collection

Raphael, Saint George and the Dragon, c. 1506, oil on panel, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.26

A man wearing armor and riding a rearing gray horse pins a winged, reptile-like dragon to the ground using a long lance at the center of this vertical painting. A woman kneels beyond the man and dragon to our left, and mountains and a city lining a body of water stretch into the deep distance. The man’s gleaming silver armor covers his whole body except his pale peach face, his brown hair, and his feet. Two long strips of burgundy-red material unfurl from under his arms to flutter behind him like banners. A white shield with a red cross is propped on his upper left arm, and he holds the lance with his right hand high over his head. The lance spans nearly the whole composition, creating a diagonal from near the top edge to the lower right corner, where it almost pierces the back of the dragon’s neck. The olive-green dragon has a royal-blue stripe down its back and tail, and it opens its beak-like mouth and sticks out its long, forked tongue. Skulls and bones are scattered on the ground around the dragon. The woman to our left has pale pink skin and her blond hair is bound up and covered with a translucent veil. Her long, high-necked dress is patterned with blue and gold, and red fringe or fabric drapes down from the underside of the sleeves. Buildings cluster at the top of a projecting ridge above the woman in the background, and more buildings line the edge of a body of water below. Ships with unfurled sails pass by blue mountains in the distance. The horizon line comes three-quarters of the way up the panel and the blue sky is dotted with clouds.

Images related to Copley's "Watson and the Shark" in the National Gallery of Art collection

Rogier van der Weyden, Saint George and the Dragon, c. 1432/1435, oil on panel, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1966.1.1

Close to us, six light-skinned men crowd into two small wooden boats that together span the width of this horizontal painting. The bow of the boat to our left overlaps the stern of the boat to our right. In the stern of the boat to our left, along the left edge of the canvas, a man, Jesus sits in profile facing our right. A marine-blue garment drapes around his waist and legs over a rose-pink tunic, and three rays of gold light emanate from the top, front, and back of his head. He raises his left hand toward the other two men in his boat. A bearded, balding man wearing marigold orange kneels with his hands pressed together in prayer in front of Jesus. To our right, at the bow of the boat and near the center of the composition, a younger bearded man with flowing hair steps toward Jesus, his arms outstretched. His pink tunic and emerald-green cape billow around him. Two muscular, bare-chested men bend over the side of the boat to our right, pulling in a fishing net. A balding man with a white beard sits in the bow of that boat, his body facing our left. He looks over his left shoulder toward the water and the half-submerged oar he holds. Blue water stretches into the distance between a distant mountain to our left and the meandering shoreline to our right. The horizon where the blue sky meets the water is close to the top edge of the composition.

Images related to Copley's "Watson and the Shark" in the National Gallery of Art collection

Jacopo Bassano, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, 1545, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1997.21.1

Watson and the Shark cemented Copley’s reputation. It challenged the stringent conventions of history painting and was an important progenitor of 19th-century romanticism. A full-scale copy that Copley made for himself is owned by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

About the Artist

A group of three adults and four children are gathered on and around a couch in an interior space that opens out to a distant hilly landscape in this horizontal portrait painting. All seven people have pale skin and are clustered across the middle of the composition. To our left, an older man wearing a white wig, white cravat, and black jacket sits facing us as he holds a squirming baby on his lap. The man’s slightly tanned face is turned to gaze to our right with pale blue eyes under thick brown eyebrows. Jowls line his jaw around pursed lips. The child in his lap twists to look up at him. She holds up her pudgy arms, grasping a gold-colored rattle with bells in her left hand. She has blond hair, smooth skin, and rose-red lips, and she wears a long white gown with a petal-pink sash around the waist. Behind this pair a younger man stands with his body angled to our right in profile as he turns his face to look at us from the corners of his eyes, with a faint smile on his closed pink lips. He also wears a white cravat and black jacket, but his hair is dove gray. His forearms rest on a low, olive-green stone column in front of him, his hands crossed at the wrist as he holds papers in his right hand. To our right and at the center of the group, a young girl stands facing us with her arms crossed at her waist. A lacy, ivory cap frames tawny brown bangs that sweep across her forehead. Her petite nose, brown eyes, and rose-red lips are set within her round face. She wears an ivory-white gown belted with a sash that shimmers from pink to copper as it cascades down her right side, to our left. On her other side, the final trio includes a woman sitting with her arms entwined around two more small children. They sit on a cranberry-red, brocaded sofa. Her sapphire-blue gown has a voluminous skirt and is trimmed with gold stitching along its square neckline. The fabric gleams softly, suggesting silk. Her dark brown hair is piled high on her head, topped by a sheer white veil. Her body is angled toward us, but her head is turned in profile to our left, bowing to almost brush noses with the young child standing alongside her. Shoulder-length brown hair falls to the child’s shoulders as the head is tipped back to gaze at the woman with a wide smile. One arm reaches up and embraces the woman’s neck and the other rests on her knee. The child wears a butter-yellow gown with a white sash around the waist. The fourth and final child lies belly down across the red and copper bolster cushion of the couch so her elbows are propped on her mother’s lap. The child turns her head back to look at us with dark eyes and slight smile on her pale pink lips. Her blond hair falls down the back of her white gown, which is belted with a gold sash. A child’s doll and hat with a rounded crown, a narrow brim, and an indigo-blue feather rests in folds of the curtain on the floral-patterned carpet near the lower left corner of the painting. The scene is framed by rust-red drapery edged in gold hanging from the upper left. In the landscape seen through an opening behind the family, hills fade from sage green to slate blue, and they become more faint as they recede to the horizon, which comes about three-quarters of the way up this composition. The opening is framed with a flowering vine climbing the wall behind the woman.

John Singleton Copley, The Copley Family, 1776/1777, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Fund, 1961.7.1

Boston-born John Singleton Copley was the foremost 18th-century American artist. Copley trained with his stepfather, an engraver who had emigrated from England, and by the late 1750s was well established as a portrait painter. A fastidious artist who eagerly stayed abreast of developments in English art, mostly through mezzotints, Copley soon earned wealth and fame for his sophisticated, penetrating, and accurate likenesses. When he married in 1769, he was prosperous enough to afford a 20-acre farm with three houses on Beacon Hill next to his friend John Hancock’s property.

The political tensions that would soon trigger the Revolutionary War were bad for Copley’s business and his social life. He was a longtime friends of many radicals, including Hancock, Paul Revere, and Sam Adams, but his in-laws and many socially prominent clients were hard-core Loyalists. Reluctant to take sides, Copley instead took flight. He left Boston for Europe in early 1774, eager to see if his New World art met Old World standards. After studying in Italy for a year, Copley settled in England, where his family joined him, and launched his second career.

John Singleton Copley, The Death of the Earl of Chatham, 1779, oil on canvas, Gift of Mrs. Gordon Dexter, 1947.15.1

Copley continued to paint portraits to support his family, but his real ambition was to undertake narrative history painting, the equivalent of painting’s heavyweight division. Watson and the Shark,Copley’s first attempt, drew favorable attention despite upending the hallowed traditions of the genre by treating a recent event—sensational no less, not moral—in a contemporary rather than classical style and form. Based on this work and a portrait of his family from the year before, in 1779 Copley he won election to London’s prestigious Royal Academy.

Copley saw himself as both an artist and a historian, and he continued his success with two more innovative modern history paintings: The Death of the Earl of Chatham, which combines the tropes of history painting and portraiture, and the dynamic Death of Major Peirson (1782–1784). Copley began taking on larger projects, including one huge work, The Siege of Gibraltar (1783–1791), that took years to complete and was not warmly received; his reputation suffered as a result.

By the 1790s his powers had started to decline and in the new century his work was considered unfashionable. He died of a stroke, debt-ridden, in 1815.