“Was it not for preserving the resemblance of particular persons,” Copley complained about colonial America, “painting would not be known in the place.” He dreamed of working in England’s more cosmopolitan artistic environment and of making “history paintings,” those images of religious, mythological, or historical events that were traditionally considered the apex of artistic achievement. In 1774 Copley left America and began a forty-year career in London. Watson and the Shark, his first large-scale history painting, depicts the heroic rescue of English merchant Brook Watson (1735–1807) who, as a young cabin boy, lost a leg to a shark while swimming in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. Watson and the Shark is an astonishing achievement for an artist who had previously painted only portraits.