Neptune's Needle

Watson and the Shark (1778; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) was the painting that brought Copley the fame he had long craved. Critics and patrons responded to Copley's twist on the large-scale contemporary history paintings made popular by Benjamin West. In Watson, Copley challenged the accepted norms of the genre by elevating an ordinary boy's terrifying experience to a realm normally reserved for heroes of exceptional stature and model virtue.

Sources

Images

Public Domain Source

Compiler

Peter Richards