National Gallery of Art: Watson and the Shark - History Painting & Sources 7

Miraculous Draught of Fishes, after Raphael

Above: Sir Nicholas Dorigny, Miraculous Draught of Fishes, engraving, 51.3 x 61.6 cm, The Harvard University Art Museums, Gift of William Gray from the collection of Francis Calley Gray, Photograph © President and Fellows, Harvard College, Harvard University Art Museums. Right: John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark (cropped detail), 1778. National Gallery of Art, Ferdinand Lammot Belin Fund 1963.6.1

For the figures in the boat, Copley may have turned to Renaissance and baroque source material. He may have seen Raphael's Miraculous Draught of Fishes in London, or studied an engraving based on the painting.