The Messages in Art
Artists have long been known to throw subtle messages into their pieces of art. One way of doing this is an artist taking an event that is part of history and making a slight change in it to show something that they feel is valuable. A perfect example of this is the painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. The artist Emanuel Leutze took the negative space in this painting and turned it into a day sky, with a shining sun. Historically, however, this event didn’t happen during the day so why did Leutze choose to portray it like that?
After seeing the majestic painting Washington Crossing the Delaware I was struck by a lot of things. The painting is a very vivid depiction of an event that happened during the American Revolutionary War. You can tell that this was the American Revolutionary War because the person who is most prominent is George Washington. He looks heroic in the picture and looks like a leader who is in charge of the situation. The saying “cool, calm, and collected” is a perfect description. One of the most poignant things that can be seen in the paining is that the wind is howling. A few perfect examples are the waving flag, and the flapping scarves around soldiers’ necks. A further example to the harsh conditions is the man sitting on the front of the boat struggling to control and keep the boat off the ice has a grimace on his face. You can also see that all the soldiers in this painting are very determined to accomplish the goal as the stern demeanor on their faces makes them look very serious and focused. Also noticeable is the ice that is in the water and that shows how hard it was to complete this mission. The boats look very rickety and old and look like they will break as soon as they hit a block of ice. This was one of the reasons why they were so determined to keep the boats off the ice. Importantly, visible in this picture is the far riverbank of the Delaware River, which was their final destination for this part of the war. The common theme in these details is the change of tone. The tone goes from dark and dreary on the bottom, to a very bright and vivid sunlight on the top. The tone truly changes the feeling of viewer towards this piece of art.
The fact that there is sunlight in what seems like the negative space in this painting raises a very interesting question as to why there was sun if they did this operation in the middle of the night. One of the answers I originally thought of is that the artist, Emanuel Leutze, wanted to make it seem more heroic that they made the attack during the day, but that gets rejected because it is actually less heroic for this battle to be done during the day because battles are usually fought then. An additional answer is that the artist wanted to show certain things that would not be visible if he made the picture look like it was at night time and the painting would lose its meaning. Another possible answer is that the artist wanted to symbolize something.
I believe the artist’s real intention was a combination of the last two answers due to the fact that the whole point of this attack was to change the tide of the war. If the viewer would be able to see all the details it would make a much more meaningful impact on him. If one would learn later that the event happened at night it would make a much greater impact on him. In the painting you can see the ice in the river and how difficult it was to cross the river. If this painting was drawn as if it was night you wouldn’t be able to see the ice and the ice was one of the many stumbling blocks in this operation and if not clearly shown in the painting, than any one who didn’t know the history behind the painting would not realize it and miss the whole point of the piece of art that if they had hit the ice it would have destroyed the whole operation and doomed the Americans. Once they see this picture and they realize how hard it was, maybe they would want to research the history and learn more about the event. Once people had this context they would then realize what I believe is the artist’s second intention, that he wanted this painting to symbolize “a dawn of a new day”
The reason our artist could have wanted to depict “a dawn of a new day,” in his artwork was because he wanted to say that this was a changing point in the war. The soldiers in Washington’s army realized that if they won this battle then they would be able to get the reinforcements that they so desperately needed. It is a known fact that the French government was debating whether to send soldiers to help the Americans in the war. The French didn’t want to send troops for a losing cause. They thought this because not only were the Americans losing battles but also because the American soldiers were outnumbered and the Americans needed something to show the French that they had a chance to beat the British and this daring mission in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve was the way to do it. The soldiers realized that if they were successful that the tide of the war would change and they would have a free country. This depiction of a sun rise is to show the dawn of a new day. The soldiers went from a mentality of a losing cause to the mentality of victory after this battle and the sunrise here signifies it. A proof for this theory is that on the top portion of the picture there are clouds which makes the whole picture seems very dreary and then it turns into a sunny picture that seems to liven up the picture. This transition in the painting is a perfect metaphor because we see that going from trouble to good times is considered going from dark to light. So too here the American soldiers are going from troubled times, symbolized by the darkness, to better and free times, symbolized by the light. These are two of my favorite answers to the famous question as to why this painting was depicted at day even though historically we know that it happened at night. The two reasons explained, the one of showing things that are not usually visible at night when painted on a canvas and “the dawn of a new day” are two of the many reasons that could possibly be given in as an answer to this very famous question that will never really be answered. We can see that artists like to throw subtle messages into their pieces of art from this painting and others. An example of this is in Jewish paintings where artists use words from the bible to create a picture. In the Jewish paintings for example the reason for this is that they are showing us how important each word is in the bible and that we can learn something from each word. I believe that it is our job to look at each painting we see and figure out what the real meaning is behind each painting as that is the real reason behind artists creating art.

Works Cited
Leutze, Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. Washington Crossing the Delaware. 1850. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. British Battles. Web. 31 January 2012.