In Sight, Out of Mind
View of the dome from inside the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
At more than 82,000 square feet, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is massive. It takes up 6.1 acres on the north side of the National Mall. But it feels even bigger once you step inside its doors and try to locate one particular work of art out of the 150,000 sculptures, decorative arts, prints, drawings, photographs and paintings in its permanent collection.
Despite having visited the gallery many times, on a recent trip I came upon a piece of art I had never seen before. It was created more than two centuries ago, and is still speaking about the world today.
On its face, John Singleton Copley’s “Watson and the Shark” recounts the true story of a young orphan boy who was saved by a group of sailors from being eaten by a shark in 1749. But it is the implied, unvocalized meanings that have interested scholars and art historians for 200 years.
“Watson and the Shark” by John Singleton Copley, 1778
“It is a striking work,” says Charles Brock, the gallery’s associate curator of American and British paintings. “It’s actually a work that probably has been the subject of more interpretation and more research than almost any other American painting — it’s both an American and British painting. It really captures a lot of people’s imaginations.”
While a celebrated artist’s dramatic reenactment of a 14-year-old Brook Watson being saved from the jaws of a great white was strong enough to bring adulation, the presence of one of the sailors is, according to Brock, what turned it into something particularly special.
“I think there are three very powerful kinds of stories or narratives that are feeding into the painting,” says Brock. “There’s the story of Brook Watson. There’s the story of Copley, the painter. But there’s also the story of the Black sailor at kind of the apex of the painting there. His plight is just as dramatic because this is set in Havana Harbor, which was one of the centers of the slave trade.”
A central figure in “Watson and the Shark” is an African sailor standing tall in his white uniform with scarf blowing in the wind. Despite the choppy seas, he appears to be reaching out his hand to Watson, while also holding the rope that the young boy is trying to grab for dear life as the shark approaches.
While there are eight other figures (not including the shark) in the scene, everything seems to revolve around the Black sailor and Watson. At the same time, a third, and just as important, element is in the background, where possible slave ships go in and out of Havana Harbor. The triangular trade was at its height when the painting was created in 1778.
“I think it makes you immediately recognize what’s happening, but then you feel that it’s saying something more,” Brock says. “And that was the ambition of great painters at that time, to paint what are called history paintings. Paintings that were full of ideas, full of intellectual work that alluded to all types of art — historical precedents, but also to greater histories. The painting is full of Copley’s ambition to do something that speaks not just to this particular incident, which is very dramatic, but to speak to grander historical realities. It does everything.”
That is what makes the painting revolutionary. Finding any British or American artwork from the 18th century that had any Black people featured is a tough task in itself. But finding one in which a person of color is the hero is nearly impossible.
“Watson and the Shark” has proven to be the outlier.
“History, of course, has been so distorted over time. And I think that this painting speaks more directly to the predicaments and also the centrality of Black lives to that history, which of course in most of the painting of the time is not acknowledged,” Brock says. “It’s very much in the moment. It hits on the historical level, but it also kind of speaks directly to what of course is an ongoing issue. And that’s where it also works at this kind of allegorical, philosophical level.”
Copley, who left America for London in 1774 just as the American Revolution was percolating, never explained what his mindset or thinking was when it came to “Watson and the Shark.” That includes why the central sailor in his original sketch was white but was changed to Black in the final product.
It has been left to art experts like Brock to try to explain the meaning and importance of the painting.
“There’s been a lot of people who’ve reacted to that. In terms of the scholarship, a lot of it by prominent African American scholars that’s recognized that this is very unusual that you are prominently featuring an African protagonist in the middle and [who] is key to the whole drama,” Brock says. “A central part of the whole drama that was in many ways unprecedented. And it spoke in a more truthful, direct way to the reality of an individual like that. And that is something; it’s a powerful portrait of him. And you can almost read the dilemma. His dilemma is kind of etched on his face. So that is something many people have reacted to and is historically almost unprecedented.”
The lives of both Copley and Watson were chronicled in great detail, including that young Watson eventually became a prominent merchant, served in Parliament and gained his wealth through the slave trade. However, that privilege was not afforded to the Black sailor — we don’t even know if he was an actual person, or if he was free or a slave. His name was wiped out of history.
But that also makes the painting a true representation of American and British legacies in terms of erasing people of color from the history books.
“We don’t know the name of the Black sailor, even though people have been trying to figure out who the individual is. But of course, that’s the strange erasing of history that takes place, even though we know how central the slave trade was,” Brock says. “I believe 800,000 were enslaved in Cuba and imported. We know how absolutely central Black lives were to that history, and yet we can’t speak directly to the history of who that individual was. I think it makes plain these disparities and these problems with the telling of these stories.”
The National Art Gallery took possession of “Watson and the Shark” in 1968. While it has been on display since then, it wasn’t until recently that the gallery saw it had an opportunity to use the work to spark conversations about history and society today.
“I think we’re engaged at the gallery with trying to tell more stories to diversify our collections, to be more representative of the history both culturally and historically,” Brock says. “And I think this is a great starting point; it’s kind of a foundation as we try to build out. This in some ways is a painting that is foundational to that effort. We’re hoping that over time our collections will get stronger, the stories we tell will be more honest and speak to these more complex histories. We’ve got a way to go, but I think we’re certainly pointed in the right direction.”