Lunch With Luetze

Its lunchtime at the Met conference and I grabbed a hotdog and ste it on the Met steps. Quintessential New York moment.

I have wandered back into the American Wing. One of the paintings I've always wanted to see in person was Emmanuel Luetze's Washingtin Crossing the Delaware. We just spent two hours with it and a dozen or so paintings. I came back in my own. 

Good lunch.

Is that a woman in the boat?

Washington Crossing the Delaware

  Emanuel Leutze, 1851, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)

As we work through the Revolutionary War, my students and I wrestle with this painting: Washington Crossing the Deleware by Emauel Leutze. This painting is roughly twelve feet by twenty one feet and images of it do not do it justice. We wrestle with the painting as a whole, but mostly with the figures in the boat. With no background knowledge of the Deleware River, the Battle of Trenton, fashion of the 18th Century, and art composition, they notice things:

• Is that a women in the boat? Would she really have been there?
• Why is Washington standing? Isn't that dangerous?
• Why are they all dressed differently. Why are some in uniforms and other not? What's the deal with free black man and the guy with beret. Would they have really been in the boat?
• Who is the guy behind Washington?

When students are engaged, they are a force to be recconned with. All three classes had great questions and offered impressive guesses as to Leutze's choices in this retelling of the crossing. At the end of this exercise we read an except (below) from Fischer's Washington Crossing. They are always surprised at how much of the painting the understood. They don't know how to articulate what they see, but they notice none the less.

The painting is familiar to us in a general way, but when we look at it again its details take us by surprise. Washington's small boat is crowded with thirteen men. Their dress tells us that they are soliders from many parts of America, and each of them has a story revealed by a few strokes of the artist's brush. One man wears the short tarpaulin jacket of a New England seaman; we look again and discover that he is of African descent. Another is a recent Scottish immigrant, still wearing the Balmoral bonnet. A third is a an androgynous figure in a loose red shirt, maybe a woman in man's clothing, pulling at the oar.

At the bow and stern of the boat are hard-faced western riflemen in hunting shirts and deerskin leggings. Huddled between the thwarts are farmers from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, in blanket coats and broad-brimmed hats. One carries a countryman's double barrel shotgun. The other looks very ill, and his head is swathed in a bandage. A soldier beside them is in full uniform, a rarity in this army; he wears the blue coat and red facings of Haslet's Deleware Regiment. Another figure wears a boat cloak and an oiled hat that a prosperous Balitmore merchant might have used on a West India Voyage; his sleeve reveals the facings of Smallwood's silk-stocking Maryland Regiment. Hiden behind them is mysterious thirteenth man. Only his weapon is visible; one wonders who he might have been.

The dominant figures in the painting are two gentlement of Virginia who stand tall above the rest. One of them is Lieutenant James Monroe, holding a big American flag upright against the storm. The other is Washington in his Continental uniform of buff and blue. He holds a brass telescope and wears a heavy saber, symbolic of a stateman's vision and a soldier's strength. The artist invites us to see each of these soldiers as an idividual, but he also reminds us that they are all in the same boat, working desparately against wind and current. He has given them a common sense of mission, and in the stormy sky above them he has painted a bright prophetic star, shining through a veil of a cloud.

-taken from the introduction of Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer

 

 

I love my my job.

A message from President Washington

This week I thought I would offer primary documents and  art connected to Thanksgiving. (Yes, that means all my grading is done but I'm not interested in tackling the "to do list" either at home or in the classroom during my week holiday.)

In October 1789, Washington issued this proclamation. Enjoy.

By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation.
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor-- and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.
Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be-- That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks--for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation--for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war--for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed--for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted--for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.
and also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions-- to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually--to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed--to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord--To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us--and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.
Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.
Go: Washington