LEUTZE, EMANUEL

born May 24, 1816, Schwbisch-Gmnd, Wrttemberg died July 18, 1868, Washington, D.C., U.S. German-born American historical painter whose picture Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City) numbers among the most popular and widely reproduced images of an American historical event. Leutze was brought to the United States as a child. In 1841 he returned to Germany to study at the Academy in Dsseldorf. He remained in Germany for almost 20 years and was primarily occupied with painting a series of canvases based on U.S. history. Sentimental and anecdotal in content, they are painstakingly executed in the highly finished style of the Dsseldorf school, characterized by firm drawing, careful rendering of detail, and filled-in colour. Leutze returned to the United States in 1859 and in 1860 was commissioned by the U.S. Congress to decorate a stairway in the Capitol at Washington, D.C., for which he painted a large composition, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (often erroneously called Westward Ho), illustrating the settlement of the Far West.