Truth Seeker ID: f956c6 Dec. 24, 2021, 2:17 p.m. No.4126   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>4130 >>4136 >>4164 >>4186 >>4377 >>4529 >>4638 >>4681

Strange Facts About One of America’s Most Iconic Paintings

 

  1. It wasn’t painted by an American

was actually painted by an immigrant. A German artist by the name of Emanuel Leutze

 

  1. The boat carries some noteworthy characters

a frontiersmen (at the bow), a Scot (second from the left facing aft), an African American (third from the left facing aft), a woman disguised as a man (foreground wearing a red shirt), two farmers (second and third from the right) and a native American (wearing buckskin and manning the tiller). Also in boat appear the future fifth president of the United States, James Monroe (clutching the flag), along with the Irish-American general Edward Hand (the man seated fourth from the right wearing a bicorn hat)

 

  1. The image is rife with inaccuracies

the Stars and Stripes flag portrayed in the image didn’t actually exist at the time.

 

crossing took place in the dead of night and in foul weather

 

a wooden boat of the size depicted in the painting would have probably sunk under the weight of so many passengers

 

Washington crossed the Delaware in a Durham boat — not a small rowboat.

 

the width of the Delaware at what is now known as Washington’s Crossing is much narrower than the picture illustrates

 

  1. America only received reproductions of the painting

 

Leutze completed the painting in 1850 and then composed a duplicate of it shortly afterwards.

 

Ironically, the version of the painting that famously hangs in the White House’s West Wing is a reproduction.

 

  1. The original became a ‘casualty of war’

 

The original ‘Crossing’ remained in Germany, it was lost in an RAF bombing raid on Bremen in 1942.

 

Many joked that its destruction was Britain’s final revenge for the American War of Independence.

 

  1. Many complain that the painting is obscene

 

school board administrators throughout the U.S. have altered textbook depictions of the painting to remove a pocket watch fob that’s shown draped across Washington’s upper right thigh. Prudish educators and parents claim that the item resembled genitals and wanted the offending bits Photoshopped out.

 

https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2002-11-22/108657/

 

https://militaryhistorynow.com/2018/12/22/whats-wrong-with-this-picture-seven-strange-facts-about-one-of-americas-most-iconic-paintings/