biography of Emanuel Gottlieb LEUTZE (1816-1868)

Birth place: Gmund, Württemberg, Germany

Death place: Washington, DC

Profession: Historical & portrait painter, teacher

Studied: John Rubens Smith in Phila.; Lessing in Düsseldorf in 1840; Munich; Venice; Rome.

Exhibited: PAFA Ann., 1836-63, 1876, 1878; Berlin Expo, 1850 (gold medal); Wash. AA, 1857-60; NAD, 1861, 1863, 1865; Brooklyn AA, 1861-73, 1879; AIC, 1889. (While living in Düsseldorf, Leutze frequently sent his paintings to the U.S. for exhibition.)

Member: Wash. AA; NA, 1860

Work: MMA ("Washington Crossing the Delaware"); U.S. Capitol Bldg., Wash., DC; Corcoran Gal.; Denver Pub. Lib.; Smithsonian Inst.; AIC; NMAA; Nat. Portrait Gal.; Cooper Union; NAD; Century Assoc.; PAFA; Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the State Dept.; Georgetown Univ. (self-portrait); Shelburne (VT) Mus.

Comments: In historical painting, he was America"s link to the German tradition. Brought to America as a child, he grew up in Phila. and was painting portraits at Churchtown, PA, by the age of twenty. From 1840-59 he made his home in Düsseldorf, where he achieved great fame for his series of paintings illustrating the life of Columbus. Leutze also became an important figure in Düsseldorf's revolt against Prussian rule. His "Washington Crossing the Delaware" is now an American icon, but it was also embraced by the Germans as symbolic of their own struggle in the Revolution of 1848. He returned briefly to the U.S. with the painting, hoping to interest Congress in acquiring it for the Capitol. This did not work out but, nevertheless, the work was extremely popular in America and the engraving after it received wide distribution. The original painting (c.1849) was destroyed when WWII bombings levelled Bremen; fortunately, Leutze painted a copy in 1851, and it is this version that hangs in Wash., DC today. Leutze went back to Düsseldorf but returned permanently to the U.S. in 1859 and began work on his "Westward the Course of Empire," an allegorical-historical mural for the House of Representatives in Wash., DC. From 1863-on, he divided his time between NYC and Washington.

Sources: G&W; DAB; Cowdrey, "A Note on Emanuel Leutze," illus.; Champlin and Perkins; Tuckerman, Book of the Artists; Lanman, Haphazard Personalities; Rutledge, PA; Cowdrey, NAD; Rutledge, MHS; Sweet, The Hudson River School; Swan, BA; Lancaster County Hist. Soc., Portraiture in Lancaster County, 129. More recently, see Baigell; McMahan, Artists of Washington, DC; Muller, Paintings and Drawings at the Shelburne Museum, 89 (w/repro.); 300 Years of American Art, vol. 1, 169; Falk, Exh. Record Series.