Watson and the Shark

Watson and the Shark by John Singleton Copley, Boston MFA

 There's a huge celebration in the Boston art world this week as the new wing of the Museum of Fine Arts is opened.  For the moment, members only (I gave up my membership about five years ago) but open to the public Nov 20th.

According to the MFA supplement in the Sunday Globe, one of the 10 must-see pieces in the new Art of the Americas wing is John Singleton Copley's Watson and the Shark.  I've seen it many times (and I've seen the smaller copy in the Detroit Art Museum).  I've also seen the original long ago, though only briefly and somewhat darkly.

This all prompted me to do a little more research because I recall very well when my school, Christ's Hospital, sold the "monstrosity" to some Americans in my second year (1963).  In our naivety, we thought they must be mad or have made a mistake.  It was about this time that London Bridge was being sold to other Americans to end up in the Arizona/California desert.  In any case I decided to check which version that was, where it is now, and how come we had it at C.H

The original Watson and the Shark (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC)

Well, it turns out that "our" copy was indeed the original, commissioned in 1778 by Brook Watson (who later became Lord Mayor of London, and therefore the nominal patron of our school).  Watson was a friend of Copley's when the latter went to live in London and wanted to commemorate the incident when he lost his leg at age 14 to a shark in Havana harbor.  I'm not sure why he wanted to commemorate the event!  But in any case, he bequeathed the painting to my school in his will of 1803.

Our painting was hung in a side gallery of our dining hall, if I recall correctly.  It was at the other end of hall, and so I never normally went over there.  When we first heard that Americans wanted to buy a painting, we (or at least I) naturally first thought of the Verrio, a huge painting which takes up most of the long dimension of the dining hall.  There's a story to this one too.  Antonio Verrio began the portrait of Charles II and his court in 1684.  Charles II was the founder of the Royal Mathematical School which in some way I've never quite understood became part of Christ's Hospital (which had been founded over 100 years earlier).  However, before Verrio could finish it (in 1690), Charles was dead and his son James II was king.  The painting therefore has the body of one king and the head of another.  This painting is notoriously difficult to photograph (it is about 60 feet long) but the photo below gives you an idea (thanks to Julian Taylor Leigh-Hunt).

You can probably get a more succinct and objective view of the present and ancient history of Christ's Hospital on its Wikipedia page.