[Music] we're in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC we walked through the hallway made a right turn and we could see the very famous painting that we're standing in front of John Singleton copley's Watson and the shark we passed for a room of portraits and the room that this is in is one of portraits and I'm reminded of how important portraiture was in early American painting but Watson and the shark presents us with something entirely different the one thing there was a market for in the American colonies was portraiture and while in the American colonies Copley painted portrait after portrait but Copley had higher aspirations and one of those aspirations was to paint the kind of Grand Manor history compositions that were at the very Pinnicle of the art hierarchy in the 18th century in history painting the artist is not painting something in front of him he's drawing from his imagination the other thing that history paintings had was the opportunity to provide a kind of moral and instructive lesson so we're talking about paintings that featured the deaths of great Heroes and showed exemplary virtues but what Copley has done is something different he hasn't looked back to the classical past this isn't Greece or Rome this is an event that happened in 1749 and this is something that we're going to see more and more of where artists begin to paint more contemporary events using the heroic language of History painting we can think for example of delaqua LIberty Leading the People the other thing that's interesting here though about the cople is that it's kind of a portrait it's a really interesting mix of a variety of different genres so I'm really drawn to the giant shark who is fiercely going after what looks like a very helpless young man and it's only upon really a second look that you can understand the enormity of this Beast its head is in the lower part of the composition and you see its tail immediately above part of the boat which means that the size of this thing we can only begin to guess at the scene was dictated by the patron Brooke Watson who went onto a long and successful mertile and political career but in 1749 was merely a young sailor on a vessel in the Caribbean he's discarded his heavy garments and gone for a swim this moment of leisure becomes dangerous very quickly and Watson wrote about this experience and you can see the shark has already come around once because you can see that his right leg is missing a foot and what has happened is the shark has come back around for a second pass we know that Watson lives but the composition does not make that clear if there's a sense of anything right now now it's hopelessness for our floundering figure in the water there are so many art historical references here we look at the figures in the foreground for example their hands are almost joined together reaching down to help grab Watson this was taken from a Raphael of the miraculous draft off fishes and the standing figure in the boat is a reference to St George killing the dragon Raphael painted a version of this so he's working through Visual ideas that have been around for centuries and doing it in a different novel way but the burning question to me is why would Brooke Watson commission this tragic moment of his life where he must have thought he was a dead man well this is a really interesting idea because when people commission portraits it was often to commemorate some kind of achievement a major life goal getting married or having children and this is a portrait that's been commissioned on what is likely one of the worst days of Brook Watson's life and so why would this be the moment in a long career that was filled with successes that Brook Watson wants to commemorate Brook Watson gave this painting to an orphanage and there I think in some ways it served as a model to inspire here is Watson Who as a teenager loses that foot and he could say justifiably I had a rough Teenage life and still I became a successful business person I was elected to Parliament I became Lord mayor of London his coat of arms had a leg on it he embraced this idea and so even though Copley isn't drawing on Ancient Greek and Roman history to tell a moral it's still is a painting that inspires that has a moral underpinning it does it has all of the trappings of a Grand Manor history painting just without the history and it's so carefully composed and we can see this pyramid of figures coply drawing ideas about compositions from the Renaissance and our eye does go up to that black figure at the apex of the pyramid if there is a kind of salvation for Watson it's the rope that he has thrown overboard that is laced over Watson's outstretched right arm we know that Watson becomes a Tory Member of Parliament and that one of the issues that's dividing the Tories and the wigs at this time is the Revolutionary War and one of the questions that the Tories ask is how can the Americans occupy a moral High Ground when they're enslaving Africans so this idea of believing one is near death and this moment of Salvation and we can think about that salvation as being social or personal or Christian and it really works with some of the elements that are taken from a Christian context the miraculous draft of fishes the St George killing the dragon those are all Christian paintings that Copley is pulling from and so the Salvation that Watson is achieving Ching might not be a spiritual salvation but he is being saved [Music]