Emanuel Leutze

Emanuel Leutze was born in Germany, grew up in Philadelphia, and went back to Germany to train in Düsseldorf, where he painted American history for audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. His most famous picture shows George Washington crossing the icy Delaware on Christmas night 1776 to attack Trenton.

He painted it in Düsseldorf, using American tourists and art students as his models, so the river in the background is really the Rhine. The first version was damaged by fire in his studio, restored, bought by the Kunsthalle in Bremen, and destroyed in a bombing raid in 1942. The one you can see is the second, full size, shown in New York in 1851, and it fills a wall of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum. Look at the flag: the Stars and Stripes it shows did not fly until 1777, the year after the crossing.