John Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark and the Taste for Flesh

This talk offers a new interpretation of Anglo-American painter John Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark (1778) and the politics of history painting. Commissioned by Brooke Watson, the painting pictures nine men, including a prominently positioned Black sailor, rescuing the young man from an aquatic adversary in the waters off Havana. Locating Georgian England in the broader circum-Atlantic world, I argue that Watson and the Shark is an allegory for the inter-imperial commerce and conflict that occasioned Watson’s incident. Throughout the eighteenth century, British and Spanish naval and commercial fleets had cooperated and competed over Cuba and its primary commodity, enslaved labour. Seeking to make a name for himself as a history painter, Copley exploited emerging, corporeal understandings of race in order to frame Watson’s singular experience as an event of public interest. As such, Watson and the Shark reveals the imperial and colonial significance of history painting as a genre. Its goal was not simply building a body politic at home, but defining Great Britain’s relationship to the world beyond its borders.

No prior art historical knowledge is necessary.

Georgian Provocations Series II is convened by Martin Postle, Senior Research Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre.

Registration via Eventbrite is required and is now open. This series will take place in person at the Paul Mellon Centre and will also be streamed live via Zoom Webinar.

Recommended Reading

Wind, Edgar. “The Revolution of History Painting.” Journal of the Warburg Institute, vol. 2, No. 2 (October 1938): 116-127. https://www.jstor.org/stable/750085.