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Emanuel Leutze

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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EMANUEL (1816-1868), American artist, was born at Gmiind, Wurttemberg, on the 24th of May 1816, and as a child was taken by his parents to Philadelphia, where he early displayed talent as an artist. At the age of twenty-five he had earned enough to take him to Dusseldorf for a course of art study at the royal academy. Almost immediately he began the painting of historical subjects, his first work, "Columbus before the Council of Salamanca," being purchased by the Dusseldorf Art Union. In 1860 he was commissioned by the United States Congress to decorate a stairway in the Capitol at Washington, for which he painted a large composition, "Westward the Star of Empire takes its Way." His best-known work, popular through engraving, is "Washington crossing the Delaware," a large canvas containing a score of life-sized figures; it is now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He became a member of the National Academy of Design in 1860, and died at Washington, D.C., on the 18th of July 1868.