The story behind the painting
Washington Crossing the Delaware
A raised profile, crowded boat and billowing flag turn a winter crossing into a public image.
- Christmas night, 1776. A frozen river. A packed boat.
- Washington stands. In a rowing boat. Through the ice.
- That flag? It didn't exist yet. Congress adopted it in 1777.
- Down low, someone braces against the side.
- Every hat is different. This isn't a real list of who was on board.
- Ice slabs everywhere. One bad push and they're in.
- Painted 75 years later. Not a record. A monument.
Washington Crossing the Delaware is an 1851 painting by Emanuel Leutze of George Washington standing in a crowded boat as his army crosses the icy Delaware River on the night of 25–26 December 1776; it hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
What does Washington Crossing the Delaware show?
Leutze gathers Washington and a packed crew in an ice-bound boat. Oars, bodies and a rising flag push the scene upward, while pale light opens above the river.
Washington stands above the others in a dark coat with red lining. His profile meets the bright sky. The pose gives him prominence within a group whose labour keeps the boat moving.
What is historically wrong with the painting?
Stars and stripes billow behind him. Congress adopted this national flag in 1777, after the 1776 crossing. Its presence reminds us that Leutze composed a later image of the event.
A figure in dark blue sits low beside the wooden gunwale. A hand rests along its edge, close to the other bodies. Angled oars and tightly gathered figures give the boat a sense of pressure and effort.
The crew wear different hats and clothing; other boats crowd the river behind them. Their variety contributes to the collective scene. This painted group is not a verified list of people who shared Washington's actual boat.
Why was it painted in Germany?
Pale slabs of broken ice float below the boat. Greenish shadows and white edges distinguish their hard surfaces from the dark water. They make the cold conditions visible as obstacles to the crossing.
The crossing took place on the night of 25–26 December 1776, before the attack at Trenton. Leutze painted it in 1851, decades later. His bright sky and dramatic poses offer a later interpretation of an icy night.
German-born Leutze grew up in America, then returned to Germany, and he painted this picture in Düsseldorf. He conceived it during the revolutions of 1848, hoping the example of the American Revolution would encourage Europe's liberal reformers, and he used American tourists and art students there as models and assistants. The river behind the boats is modelled on the Rhine, not the Delaware. His first version was damaged by fire in his studio soon after it was finished; restored, it went to the Kunsthalle Bremen and was destroyed in a British bombing raid in 1942. The canvas in New York is his second, full-size version. (Wikipedia)
What happened to the painting after 1851?
The second version went on show in New York in October 1851, and more than 50,000 people came to see it. Marshall O. Roberts bought it for $10,000, an enormous sum at the time, and after several changes of owner John Stewart Kennedy gave it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1897. In 2007 an 1864 photograph by Mathew Brady turned up showing the eagle-crested frame Leutze had designed for it, and a carved replica was made from that photograph. The crossing it shows turns 250 on 25–26 December 2026. (Wikipedia)
The Met describes responses ranging from patriotism to conflict and struggle. Return to the shared work beneath the flag: the image celebrates collective effort, while its public meaning remains open to debate.
The details at a glance
Where is Washington Crossing the Delaware?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art · New York
Sources and further reading
- Washington Crossing the Delaware — The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Artist biography: Emanuel Leutze (Wikipedia, English)
- Washington Crossing the Delaware (Wikipedia, English)