Object Details
Artist
Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, born Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany 1816-died Washington, DC 1868
Luce Center Label
Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze spent his early career as an itinerant portraitist in Maryland and Virginia. He painted this scene of a young boy while he was experimenting with portraiture, and the boy’s pose allowed the artist to show various angles of the body. Images of children at play were popular in the 1830s, when childhood seemed to be an increasingly fleeting time of life. Three years before Leutze painted this scene, the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville announced that “in America there is, in truth, no adolescence. At the close of boyhood [the young American] is a man and begins to trace out his own path.” (Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood, 2004)
Credit Line
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase in memory of Joshua C. Taylor through the Director's Discretionary Fund
Date
1837
Object number
1981.51
Restrictions & Rights
CC0
Type
Painting
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
13 3/8 x 12 1/8 in. (34.0 x 30.8 cm.)
See more items in
Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection
Department
Painting and Sculpture
On View
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Luce Foundation Center, 3rd Floor, 4A
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Luce Foundation Center
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Luce Foundation Center, 3rd Floor
Data Source
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Topic
Landscape\tree
Animal\bird
Figure male\child
Recreation\sport and play\climbing
Object\other\nest
Link to Original Record
Record ID
saam_1981.51