GALLERY 64: John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, dated 1778
Unusual in European art, the sense of immediacy in this rescue scene was an American innovation, and it assured Copley’s reputation in Britain while furthering the importance of realism in narrative painting. The successful merchant and former English sailor Brook Watson commissioned the young American artist, who had settled in London, to depict an adventure that occurred in the sailor’s youth. Watson had been attacked by a shark while swimming in Havana, Cuba, in 1749. Using a fresh approach, Copley recaptured the horror of that event by lending vivid emotions to the rescuers—cowardice, fear, compassion—and by catching the helpless fright of the boy.
GALLERY 60B: Gilbert Stuart, The Skater, painted in 1782
Artist and subject, while breaking from the first posing session for this portrait, took to the fresh air and exercise of skating on the frozen Serpentine in London’s Hyde Park. The sport gave Stuart a novel idea, which he translated with a free-spirited freshness and vigor. Commissioned by Mr. William Grant, this, Stuart’s first full-length portrait, was a triumph at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1782. Unlike West, under whom he studied, and Copley, another American artist, Gilbert Stuart eventually returned to the United States, achieving further fame with his innumerable portraits of George Washington. Painted in 1795, the famous portrait in gallery 62 is believed to be his first life study of the president.
GALLERY 60: Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life: Childhood, dated 1842
One of the earliest American landscapists, Thomas Cole produced imaginary, symbolic scenes as well as glorified panoramas of native wilderness. In the first of four fantasies, Childhood, a baby’s ship of life, steered by a guardian angel, floats at the source of a river toward a promising dawn. In the other three pictures completing The Voyage of Life series, Youth sets off on a meandering stream, striving toward a castle in the clouds, while Manhood weathers a storm on a tumultuous river and Old Age drifts into a quiet ocean where heavenly messengers wait to receive him.
