Welcome back George!

Did you even know he was gone? Well, everybody needs some time at the spa….and George was doing JUST that….along with a little ode to Joan Rivers in the plastic surgery department, as they gave him a new frame too. NEW in build…not new in style. Old photographs from the Sanitary Fair in 1864 were recovered, and it took an independent framer 10 years to copy the gold-leaf frame that once encased the Leutze. (BTW? This NY “Sanitary Fair” was a fund-raiser for Union soldiers, and was the painting’s last major showing before it went to the newly formed Met). George has also got himself a pretty sweet home make-over at the Metropolitan Museum of Art…. at a mere $100 million, he’s got most all of Hollywood beat! He is, however, fabulous enough to share his new digs with some of the other greats of American Art, and hopefully you’ll get to visit the neighborhood soon!

Washington Crossing the Delaware is a painting by a German artist Emanuel Leutze in 1848. They say “he conceived of the painting in the grandiose style of the Dusseldorf school not to impress his adopted country of America, but to inspire Germany to revolution…”. Interesting. Even more interesting is that just as Leutze was getting ready to ship it to America? It was burned and destroyed completely in a studio fire…..so the one we see today? Is his SECOND one that he painted. Incredible. It was also the climax of Leutze’s career and so while he was still successful as an artist, George, was his best….and really it’s George #2! (Now, impress Alex Trebek with THAT little gem!)

But it’s SO historically inaccurate!!!! Yes, that’s true… The weather, is all wrong, never would there have been icebergs in the Delaware. (Though I think it paints, no pun intended, a properly cold picture!). There were no horses on the boats….so they say…(keep looking till you see them, they are there!) The men’s uniforms, with the exception of George’s….are mid-nineteenth-century, the flag in the boat wasn’t in existence yet, and George, never would have stood on that boat,! However, George himself, was painted VERY accurately. Emanuel Leutze painted this after Washington was dead, and he made it a point to get the exact uniform from the Smithsonian and had a friend model it, so he could get it just right. Some people, however, can’t get over how wrong it is…but then I have to wonder what those people say about Picasso, or Dali, or Matisse….

The joy of art, is that you get to love it, or you get to hate it, and even though most of us aren’t talented enough to better it, we get to criticize it! So, go visit….go make your own opinions! And? Get a map, and ask for instructions, twice, as the Met is only about 2,000,000 square feet small!