Watson and the Shark

John Singleton Copley

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Copley painted this rapid study for "Watson and the Shark" from his first rendering of the iconic work—now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington—in preparation for successive versions, found in the collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It depicts the future Lord Mayor of London, Brook Watson, who, as a teenager, lost his leg to a shark while swimming in Havana harbor in 1749. A Black sailor forms the apex of the composition, holding a rope for the victim who later famously defended the slave trade in the West Indies. Copley’s dramatic depiction of an ordinary man in the midst of an extraordinary event of unresolved peril in the Atlantic World revolutionized British-American history painting.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art