The artist, Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, was born in Germany in May 24, 1816. He was raised by his parents in America. First they were in Fredericksburg, then Va and finally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Growing up in America probably gave him "liberal and expressive views", unlike Europe at the time.
In 1841 he returned to Germany to study at the academy in Dusseldorf. This academy had a particular style of consistency on hard linearism and elevated subject matter, this academy was very popular and attracted students throughout Europe and America, and was influenced by Nazarenes group, a group that looked to the early Renaissance Style and its subject was always focused on religious subject matters, and so left a blue print on it.
Their influence is shown in the way that paintings show a theatrical composition common to a school's students of historical painting.
Dusseldorf accademy style combined elements of linearism, drawing techniques of neoclassicists with subject matter and gesture of Romantics (the position in which Washington is painted).
The use of colour and texture was not encouraged and there was more stress on drawings and organized composition.
Gottlieb was influenced by and taught in this style. Infact, after 20 years in Germany he was commissioned to paint a series of canvases based on American history.
This made him popular in such style with a historical American theme.
His liberal views brought up in America made him proud in depicting historical US triumph. Infact most of his paintings represent US historical wars having infocus one or a small group of people as main focus represented as US historical leaders.
Though this painting features several historical inaccuracies stated from an abstract below he wanted to deliver a message of hope and courage to his fellow German patriots which were involved during revolution of 1848 in which many EU countries arrouse against EU monarchies and which ended in failure, repression and widespread disillusionment among liberals.
So Gottlieb used his art with a US historical events effectively to convey a message to his own EU countries. So he used other's historical conflict inorder to encourage and deliver a message of hope to EU countries which were not liberal at all under monarchs. Infact in this painting he used American tourist and art students as models and assistance to his painting.
This shows that a historical event of a country can be represented in a painting although not historically accurate, a message to other countries.
Historical inaccuracies
The flag depicted is the original flag of the United States (the "Stars and Stripes"), the design of which did not exist at the time of Washington's crossing. The flag's design was specified in the June 14, 1777, Flag Resolution of the Second Continental Congress, and flew for the first time on September 3, 1777—well after Washington's crossing in 1776. The historically accurate flag would have been the Grand Union Flag, officially hoisted by Washington himself on January 2, 1776, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, as the standard of the Continental Army and the first national flag.
Artistic concerns motivated further deviations from historical (and physical) accuracy. For example, the boat (of the wrong model) looks too small to carry all occupants and stay afloat, but this emphasizes the struggle of the rowing soldiers. There are phantom light sources besides the upcoming sun, as can be seen on the face of the front rower and shadows on the water, to add depth. The crossing took place in the dead of night, so there ought to have been little natural light, but this would have made for a very different painting. The river is modeled after the Rhine, where ice tends to form in jagged chunks as pictured, not in broad sheets as is more common on the Delaware. (However, it is speculated that the Delaware River really was frozen over as depicted because of the Little Ice Age that was occurring at the time.)[citation needed] Also, the Delaware at what is now called Washington Crossing is far narrower than the river depicted in the painting. It was also raining during the crossing. Next, the men did not bring horses or field guns across the river in the boats, but instead had them transported by ferries. Finally, Washington's stance, obviously intended to depict him in a heroic fashion, would have been very hard to maintain in the stormy conditions of the crossing. Considering that he is standing in a rowboat, such a stance would have risked capsizing the boat. However, historian David Hackett Fischer has argued that everyone would have been standing up to avoid the icy water in the bottom of the boat (the actual boats used have higher sides).[2]
