Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

he would conceptually synthesize an expression of their personality frozenin time and firmly locked into space, almost like a still life painting.Yet Copley longed most of all to master and paint in the Europeancourtly and academic style, especially after he finally left for London in1774 (just as the Boston Tea Party was dumping his Tory father-in-law’s teainto Boston Harbor). He took a “grand tour” of the Continent to learn theessence of the European practice of painting—that is, as he put it, sacrificing“the small parts to the General Effect” and constructing a tapestry ofquick, visible brush strokes that approximated the sensory effects of light,color, and atmosphere. The emphasis on a distillation of individual tactilesensations and depictions of specific material objects and figures from hisAmerican experience were relaxed, as Copley struggled to paint less frommemory and idea and more from actual, specific perception.He also expanded his work into “history painting,” the grandest andmost esteemed of the European genres of art. Although this turn led to someof his worst, most overblown images, it also produced a few of the masterpiecesof early Americanart, especially Watson andthe Shark of 1778 and TheDeath of Major Peirson of1782–84. Although basedon a historical incidentand framed in the visuallanguage of heroic history-paintinggoing backto the Renaissance (thinkMichael Fighting the Dragon),the quite palpablyrendered Watson and theShark can also be read asan early Moby Dick-likeimage of the Americanstruggle with the “powersbelow” (Figure 1).Such a picture providedits primarily Europeanaudience with the appealof new adventures andunfamiliar places in theNew World.Figure 1. John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, 1778,oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston101