5: Historical Stories with Leutze
Emanuel Leutze
Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851Oil on canvas, w647.7 cm x h378.5 cm (255" x 149")
Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), New York City, NY USA
'History' history painting: a depiction of a scene (or composite scene) referring to actual historical events. (I'll refer to the broader category as *history painting genre*, and this specific subset as *history subset* through the rest of this post. Otherwise things be getting confusing.)
So the history subset is pretty straightforward, and gives us paintings like the above: a picture of the Continental Army under Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas night ahead of the Battle of Trenton.
But two things to note:
One, paintings in the history subset are almost never 'accurate'. So it always has to be asked how inaccurate a depiction is, and what the alterations signify.
And two, the inaccuracy happens because like all the other types of the history painting genre, this subset comes with overlaid narratives and intended meanings. Actually, let me loudly rephrase that: THE HISTORY SUBSET IS NEVER NOT POLITICAL. Context is always everything, but seriously, context is everything here.
Look at the allegorical painting example again (click image for its blog post):
And then look at the one up top. Liberty may not be bodily leading the American troops as in Delacroix's work, but she may as well be given how similar in tone these two paintings are: the rightness, the triumph, the edge of danger and struggle that the revolutionaries must surmount to carry out the cause. And fun fact: the visual similarity is probably because the two paintings were meant to serve similar purposes. Delacroix's was meant to stir up patriotic revolutionary action from his contemporary French citizens, and Leutze's was actually painted in Germany to inspire European revolutionaries during a wave of reform in the mid-1800s, using the American Revolution as an exemplar1. And this painting is even now reprinted and slapped everywhere within the U.S. because it speaks to a version of the American story that we like to repeat to ourselves: it speaks to courage in the pursuit of necessary (dangerous!) change, of valorous men standing up for what's right.
But again, context...and if nothing else, the context that a history painting is never a fact in itself, and is always first and foremost a work of art, angling for a particular response from You the Viewer. Maybe the best way to think about it is that when you enter a museum hall full of illustrious historical images like this, you enter a roomful of artists, all personalities and backgrounds, telling you stories. Many are great stories, told beautifully, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with having the response the artist wanted. It's just also wise to continue to be curious — why this story from this artist, what's left out, what was added in, and what other stories go with it?
NOTES:
1. Official blurb about Washington Crossing the Delaware on pg 81 of this online guide to the Met, more info here.