John Singleton Copley
American Painter
1738-1815
Self Portrait ,Oil on canvas, 1780-1784, NPG.77.22 National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
John Singleton Copley is generally recognized as colonial America's preeminent artist. By age nineteen, he was a well-established portrait painter in Boston, dabbling in engraving, pastels, and miniatures. Despite his success with portraits, however, Copley wanted to paint historical scenes, a subject that was in vogue at the time. In 1766 he sent his painting Boy with a Squirrel (1765) to England for exhibition at the Society of Artists, where it received marked praise from the renowned American expatriate artist Benjamin West, who encouraged Copley to study in Europe. However, Copley was reluctant to leave his prosperous career in the colonies. Finally, in 1774, with war looming, he moved with his family to London, where he took up history painting. His American portraits are characterized by fine, detailed representations of faces and fabrics.
One key to Copley's success in England was his choice of contemporary subjects that were of interest to his audience. Brook Watson, a London merchant, commissioned Copley to paint a scene from his youth: while swimming in Havana harbor, Watson had been attacked by a shark and lost part of his leg. He subsequently recovered and went on to become a prominent public figure. For Watson, the attack and recovery symbolized his triumph over adversity, and he hoped that the painting would provide "a most usefull Lesson to Youth." The result was a work entitled Watson and the Shark.
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http://educate.si.edu/spotlight/artists1.html#copley