Emanuel Leutze

Emanuel Leutze painted American history as grand drama. His large canvases are full of heroic poses, strong light and careful period detail, in the style of the Düsseldorf school where he trained.

Born in Schwäbisch Gmünd in Württemberg, he was brought to the United States as a child and grew up in Philadelphia. In 1840 he went to study at the Düsseldorf Academy and stayed in Germany for many years. There he painted Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851), one of the most famous images in American art, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Back in the United States he painted Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, a mural for the Capitol in Washington, where he died in 1868.

Columbus Before the Queen and Mrs. Schuyler Burning Her Wheat Fields on the Approach of the British show his love of a turning point in history, told through one clear gesture.