Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze
1907-1954
Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze was a German / American history painter. He is perhaps best-known for his painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. It is owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York.
Leutze was born in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Württemberg, Germany, and brought to America as a child. His parents settled first in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
He received his first instruction in art from J. A. Smith, a portrait painter in Philadelphia. In 1840 one of his pictures attracted attention and procured him several orders, which enabled him to go to Düsseldorf, where he studied with Lessing. In 1842 he went to Munich, studying the works of Cornelius and Karlbach, and the following year he visited Venice and Rome.
His first work, Columbus before the Council of Salamanca was purchased by the Düsseldorf Art Union. A strong supporter of Europe's Revolutions of 1848, Leutze decided to paint an image that would encourage Europe's liberal reformers with the example of the American Revolution. Using American tourists and art students as models and assistants, Leutze finished Washington Crossing the Delaware in 1850.
In 1859, Leutze painted a portrait of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney which hangs in the Harvard Law School. In 1860 Leutze was commissioned by the U.S. Congress to decorate a stairway in the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, for which he painted a large composition, Westward the Course of Empire takes its Way.
Late in life, he became a member of the National Academy of Design. He was also a member of the Union League Club of New York, which has a number of his paintings.
He died in Washington, D.C. in his 53rd year.
Leutze's portraits are known less for their artistic quality than for their patriotic emotionalism. Both named works firmly rank among the American national iconography.
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