‘Washington Passes Delaware’ Will Be Sold At Auction


The other two canvases were sent to the United States after Leutze finished it in 1851. Miss Kestenman said the larger canvas went to the Stuyvesant Institute in New York and was displayed under bright lights in October 1851.

“It has become a real event,” he said. “It was like going to the theater to see this painting.” Over the next four months, nearly 50,000 people paid 25 cents per ticket to see it.

The smaller painting was always privately owned and was created so that it could be more easily reproduced by an engraver who could later mass produce prints of the piece. It was sold for $260,000 in 1973. most people have ever paid for an American painting.

It was sold for $370,000 six years later, Ms Kestenman said. According to Christie’s, it was loaned to the White House, where it was displayed during various administrations.

In 2015, the picture briefly Hanged at the Minnesota Museum of Marine Art in Winona.

Kestenman said the painting was sold by a private seller, who did not wish to be identified or discuss the auction of the canvas.

“I think it will sell very well,” he said. John Tilford, curator of the collections of the Oglethorpe University Art Museum in Atlanta. “It really depends on how many rich people want this painting.”

Mr Tilford said it only took two bidders competing for the piece to raise the price.

The value of the picture is not only in its recognizability – it is so familiar that it has been parodied by shows such as the following. “Veep,” “Puppets” and “Queer Eye” — but also in Leutze’s role in its creation, said Mr Tilford.



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