Emanuel Leutze

Romantic history painter Emanuel Leutze (1816-1868) created one of the most recognizable images in American art: "Washington Crossing the Delaware." Born in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Kingdom of Württemberg, he came to America as a child in 1825. His family settled first in Fredericksburg, Virginia, then Philadelphia. His artistic talent emerged while caring for his sick father, and after his father died in 1831, 14-year-old Leutze began painting portraits for five dollars each to support himself. In 1840, one of his paintings attracted enough attention to send him to study at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany.

A strong supporter of Europe's Revolutions of 1848, Leutze decided to paint an image encouraging liberal reformers with the example of the American Revolution. Using American tourists and art students as models, he finished a first version in 1850. That painting was damaged by fire, restored, and acquired by the Kunsthalle Bremen, where it was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1942. The second version, completed in 1850, was shipped to New York and exhibited in October 1851. Wealthy capitalist Marshall O. Roberts purchased it for the then-staggering price of $10,000.

The painting contains several inaccuracies: the flag is anachronistic, the boats are too small, the time of day is wrong, and Washington probably couldn't have stood as depicted. Leutze painted a river resembling the Rhine rather than the narrow Delaware. None of this diminished its impact. In 1860, Congress commissioned him to paint "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way" for a Capitol Building stairway. The primary "Washington Crossing the Delaware" was donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1897, where it remains one of their most popular works. A smaller third version sold at Christie's in 2022 for $45 million. Other works hang at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.