Feeble, callow, moronic: Fighting History at Tate Britain

This exhibition should have been a fascinating look at the way we depict significant historical events. Instead it’s a glib cliche

There are lots of things you could do with £12, the full adult admission price to this exhibition. Buy a book, or go to the pub – anything you like – just don’t blow it on this feeble and half-hearted saunter through history and art.

In the 18th century, when British art first made international waves, painters aspired to tell mighty stories. The genre known as history painting meant a dramatic depiction of great events, whether mythological scenes or contemporary news. A captivating example – which is not, of course, in this exhibition – is John Singleton Copley’s painting Watson and the Shark, which depicts a real event when the unfortunate Brook Watson was attacked by a tiger shark just off Havana in 1749. Today, shock stories like this fill newspapers; back then, an artist was commissioned to depict the latest sensation in oils with the self-conscious poses of classical statuary.

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