Emanuel Leutze was a German-American history painter best known for Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851), one of the most iconic images in American history. Born in Germany and raised in Philadelphia, he returned to Düsseldorf to study painting and produced the massive canvas there — using the Rhine River as his model for the Delaware, and American expatriates as his models for Washington's soldiers. The painting was immediately recognized as a defining image of American national identity and patriotic resolve, though historians have noted numerous historical inaccuracies in the scene.
