Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze was the foremost American history painter of the mid, nineteenth century He was born near Stuttgart but came to this country with his family in 1825, settling in Philadelphia. In 1834 he began to copy engravings and drew from casts in classes taught by John Rubens Smith (1775-1849). He worked primarily as a portraitist until his patrons sent him on a European study trip in 1840. He spent the 1840s in Düsseldorf, where his artistic direction and style were shaped. He enrolled in the Düsseldorf Academy in late 1841 and by 1842 was already completing large historical paintings. In 1843 he left the academy to establish an independent studio. He traveled through southern Germany and Italy during 1843-45. In 1845 he married Julianne Lottner.
Leutze was so productive and influential a history painter that he was elected president of the Union of Düsseldorf Artists for Mutual Aid and Support. In 1851 he completed the work for which he is best known, Washington Crossing the Delaware (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), and returned to the United States for a year for its display. From 1852 to 1858 he again worked in Düsseldorf and elsewhere in Germany, but after 1859, except for a brief trip in 1865, he remained in the United States, primarily in Washington, D.C., and New York. During the 1850s he painted his best historical paintings and portraits. In 1861 he made a trip to the western United States in preparation for a mural commission for the United States Capitol. He continued to work until his death from a stroke.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Tuckerman 1867, pp. 333 - 45 § Ann Hawkes Hutton, Portrait of Patriotism: "Washington Crossing the Delaware" (Philadelphia: Chilton, 1959) § Raymond L. Stehle, "The Life and Works of Emanuel Leutze," copyright 1972, copies of typescript in LACMA, Research Library; Washington, D.C., Library of Congress; New-York Historical Society; with annotated list of works § Barbara S. Groseclose, Emanuel Leutze, 1816-1868: Freedom Is the Only King (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Collection of Fine Arts, 1975), with catalogue of known works, annotated list of American artists in Düsseldorf, 1840-60, bibliography, published in conjunction with an exhibition at the National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1976 § Barbara S. Groseclose, "Washington Crossing the Delaware: The Political Context," American Art Journal 7 (November 1975): 70,78.