Washington Crossing the Delaware

There is very little room in this boat. Rowers bend into their work, an oar reaches toward the foreground, and slabs of ice crowd the water. Above the huddled bodies, George Washington stands upright beneath the flag. The painter has made him easy to find even across the gallery. Emanuel Leutze painted Washington Crossing the Delaware in 1851, decades after the Revolutionary War crossing it represents. He arranged a past event for a nineteenth-century audience. The painting attracted attention in Germany as well as the United States, at a time when revolutionary political feeling gave an American struggle fresh uses abroad. Follow the strong diagonals of the oars, the boat and the flag. They surround Washington’s steadier vertical figure and turn difficult movement into a heroic public image. Even the current trophy-style frame takes part in that presentation. It reproduces the original frame with the help of a nineteenth-century photograph. After taking in the whole scene, settle on one rower’s bent body and the small space left between the boat and the ice.