which represents an English victory at sea in 1692.Singleton Copley, another American, also found an audience in London. Copley «s Watson and the Shark <javascript:OpenBrWindow(»images/h2.htm«,»h2«,»resizable=yes,width=210,height=240«)> was a private commission illustrating a scene from the life of Brook Watson. Orphaned as a child, Watson later became a wealthy businessman and eventually the mayor of London. By executing this scene with the epic scale and drama traditionally reserved for public works, Copley transforms an episode of personal history into an allegory of salvation with instructive value for public life. Copley »s preliminary sketch for the Death of the Earl of Chatham <javascript:OpenBrWindow(«images/h3.htm»,«h3»,«resizable=yes,width=210,height=260»)> shows a more traditional subject for history painting. The finished product was roughly ten feet wide-a huge monument to an esteemed public figure.America, demand for paintings that celebrated national triumphs did not emerge until after the American Revolution, and then on a less monumental scale. This was due in part to the lack of large public spaces suitable for such grand works and to a reluctance of a young government short on funds to spend money on public decoration. The narrative cycle completed by John Trumbull for the Rotunda of the US Capitol is the notable exception., There was a great demand for smaller-scale works of historical subjects. Paul Revere dramatized the Boston Massacre <javascript:OpenBrWindow(«images/h4.htm»,«h4»,«resizable=yes,width=210,height=295»)> in order to rally colonists to the Revolutionary cause. Scenes of American military conflict <javascript:OpenBrWindow(«images/h5.htm»,«h5»,«resizable=yes,width=210,height=285»)> were very popular among naive or self-taught artists from the earliest days of the Revolution through the mid-nineteenth century <javascript:OpenBrWindow(«images/h6.htm»,«h6»,«resizable=yes,width=210,height=260»)>[4].Civil War provided contemporary sources for artists interested in historical subjects. Winslow Homer, as an artist correspondent for Harper «s Weeklyduring the war, illustrated vignettes of military life . JG Tanner »s Engagement between the« Monitor » and the «Merrimac» <javascript:OpenBrWindow(«images/h8.htm»,«h8»,«resizable=yes,width=210,height=270»)> depicts the famous stalemate between the two armored vessels, the first of their kind, that ushered in a new era in naval warfare. Sometimes these events were depicted as allegories to suggest their timeless meaning. AA Lamb represented the Emancipation Proclamation <javascript:OpenBrWindow(«images/h9.htm»,«h9»,«resizable=yes,width=210,height=260»)> as Liberty in a chariot, triumphantly leading Lincoln and the Union troops before the Capitol.of grand-scale public painting did not revive until the late nineteenth century and continued...
