National Gallery of Art: Watson and the Shark - History Painting & Sources 4

The picture's complex composition was an artistic challenge for Copley, for it contained:

bullet a shark (which he probably had never seen)

bullet a locale with which he was unfamiliar

bullet numerous action figures

bullet a nude (hardly a typical subject for a colonial American portraitist!)

Modification of John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, 1778. National Gallery of Art, Ferdinand Lammot Belin Fund 1963.6.1