According to national reports, a “Washington Crossing the Delaware” painting that hung in the White House from the 1970s to 2014, is coming up for auction in May. It is estimated to fetch about $20 million.
The iconic work depicts George Washington leading soldiers across the Delaware River to surprise the infantry hiding on the other side on Christmas Night, 1776
The 1851 oil painting is one of three versions painted by Emanuel Leutze of the man who was to be the first United States president leading troops during a key moment of the American Revolution. Only two survived.
The first version was destroyed during a World War II air raid in Germany and the second was the monumental work that is the centerpiece of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American Wing. That original hung in the Visitor Center at Washington Crossing Historic Park until the 1970s. Anne Hawkes Hutton, founder of the Washington Crossing Park Foundation and the person responsible for bringing the painting to Bucks County, had a copy made. That copy hangs in the Visitor Center today.
According to the Reuters report, art specialist Paige Kestenman at Christie’s New York said, “A German-born American immigrant, Leutze was also a staunch abolitionist and in ‘Washington crossing the Delaware’ he deliberately included a variety of the figures that make up the melting pot that formed the American nation.” She pointed out a Black soldier, another soldier wearing a Scottish bonnet, and moccasins and buckskin clothing suggesting the American West and Native Americans.
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