Emanuel Leutze

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze ( born May 24, 1816 in Gmünd ( today Schwäbisch Gmünd ); † July 18, 1868 in Washington, DC) was a born in Germany American history painter.

Life

Leutze came in 1825 in children in the United States and studied painting in Philadelphia. At the age of 25, he returned temporarily to Germany to study under Carl Friedrich Lessing at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Leutze is thus attributed to the history of art of the Düsseldorf School. His most famous painting Washington Crossing the Delaware ( 1851) ( " Washington Crossing the Delaware " ) dates from this period and contains impressions of the river landscape of the Rhine at Kaiserwerth. The City Sea bush in Rhein-Kreis Neuss claims that it is the banks, which can be seen in the background of the image, not to the bank of the Delaware, but the banks of the Rhine at sea bush. The second version of this image is now owned by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the first burned in 1942 during an allied air raid in the Kunsthalle Bremen.

Leutze was a long time president of the association Düsseldorf artists for mutual support and gave rise to the 1848 foundation of the artist association " paintbox " and in 1856 to the creation of the " German Art Cooperative". In 1842 he went to Munich and from there to Venice and Rome. In 1845 he returned to Dusseldorf, where he married in October Juliane Lottner. Your portrait he painted in 1846 and 1847 ( The amber necklace, wife with daughter Ida on the arm ). Also during his time in Europe, he devoted his paintings especially motives of American history, so his first picture of the Düsseldorf time, Columbus before the Council of Salamanca in already. This subject area also includes works such as Christopher Columbus at the gates of the monastery of La Nahida, Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth dismissed on the walk (1845 ), Torquemada determined King Ferdinand, the embassy of the Jews (1846), Puritan, his daughter in front of a picture of the Madonna surprisingly (1847 ) and Washington at Monmouth ( 1852-1854 ).

In 1859 he moved back over to America, where he was to adorn the boardrooms of Congress and the Senate in the Washington Capitol with historic murals. In 1861 he created under this contract, the monumental mural Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way.

Work

Leutze's images are less known for their artistic quality than for their patriotic pathos. These two works are fixed to the national iconography of the U.S. and have been caricatured as often.