Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze

History painting—the depiction of momentous events—was slow to gain wide acceptance in America. The early painters Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley had presented contemporary events in the grand manner, but both moved to England to obtain patronage. In the mid-nineteenth century Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (1816–1868) emerged as the premier painter of significant events in American history. During the tense years leading up to the Civil War, the public found comfort in his heroic depictions of Revolutionary War subjects. His 1851 painting Washington Crossing the Delaware, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, has been widely reproduced since its inception and remains a beloved masterpiece of American art.

Leutze was born in Swäbisch-Gmünd, Germany, near Stuttgart, on May 24, 1816. His father was an artisan, likely of metalwork, a highly celebrated regional craft. In 1826, the Leutze family immigrated to Philadelphia to escape political oppression. Leutze’s father died in 1831, so by the age of fifteen, the young Leutze was supporting his family through portrait commissions. His early success prompted him to pursue painting lessons in Philadelphia from John Rubens Smith, after which he became an itinerant portrait painter, working for wealthy families in the Fredericksburg area.

While portraiture was a lucrative venture for Leutze, he desired something more meaningful. With the support of his patrons, Leutze left for Europe in 1841 and enrolled in the Düsseldorf Academy, at the time a favorite destination for Americans studying in Europe. Under the tutelage of Karl Friedrich Lessing, Leutze learned the complexities of history painting and how to use past events as commentary on current circumstances. [1] During his years in Düsseldorf, Leutze developed friendships with many American artists, including Worthington Whittredge who posed as George Washington for Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware. Leutze served as president of the Düsseldorf Artists’ Association, and became an important teacher at the academy. Although he did not return to the United States until 1859, Americans were his primary clients. A New York critic in 1843 captured the scope of Leutze’s success: “We are assured that an American public will sympathize with us in the rising fortunes of a young and talented countryman who has struggled manfully against every difficulty, and by the sheer force of mind, has raised himself from the humble station of an itinerant portrait painter in Virginia, to the favor of the courts, academies, and the monarchs of England.” [2]

The success of Leutze’s history paintings assured him many commissions when he returned to the United States in 1859. He became a member of the National Academy of Design and was asked by Congress to adorn the staircase of the Capitol Building in Washington. For this undertaking, Leutze used studies he had made on his travels west to create Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way, 1860, a celebration of Manifest Destiny that served as a beacon of unity at time of national crisis.

Notes:

[1] Barbara S. Groseclose, Emanuel Leutze, 1816-1868: Freedom Is the Only King (Washington: National Collection of Fine Arts, the Smithsonian Institution, 1975), 18.

[2] “The Young American Artist Leutzi [sic],” New World 6 (February 25, 1843): 246.