Washington Crossing the Delaware
Emanuel Leutze (1816 to 1868) · 1851
One of the largest paintings in the museum fills an entire wall of the American Wing. George Washington stands in the bow of a crowded rowing boat, his face lit by the dawn, while his men strain at the oars and pole away slabs of ice. Behind him a young officer holds the flag, and a fleet of boats stretches back across the river. It is the night of 25 December 1776, and the Continental Army is crossing the Delaware to surprise the Hessian garrison at Trenton, the victory that saved the American Revolution.
The painting is a piece of theatre, and it is meant to be. Leutze fills the boat with a cross section of the new nation: farmers in hunting shirts, a Black oarsman, a man in a Scottish bonnet, a figure in a Native American headdress, and a frontiersman in the stern. Nobody would really stand up in a small boat in an ice storm, and the flag shown was not adopted until months later, but the picture is about ideals rather than facts. Look at the frozen river, painted with real skill, and at the way the low light rakes across the ice. The enormous scale means you feel you are in the water alongside them.
Leutze was a German American painter who made the picture in Düsseldorf, hoping it would inspire the liberal revolutions of 1848 in Europe. The first version was damaged by fire and destroyed in the Second World War. This second version was shipped to New York in 1851, drew enormous crowds, and was given to the Met in 1897. It remains the most famous image of the American Revolution ever painted.
Did You Know? The river in the painting looks more like the Rhine than the Delaware, because Leutze painted it in Germany using the Rhine as his model.
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