Inaccurate “facts” often litter the popular perception of many historic events. Take one of the American Revolution’s most iconic paintings, Washington Crossing the Delaware. It is dramatic, stirs the viewer’s soul, and as such, it is great work of art. As to the accuracy of its depiction of the actual event, though, it falls short of the mark. Below are thirty things about that and other inaccurate things about history that are widely taken as true in America.
30. The American Revolution’s Most Iconic Image?
Decades after it ended, German -American artist Emanuel Gottleib Leutze painted in 1851 what came to be one of the American Revolution’s most iconic images: Washington Crossing the Delaware. Leutze actually painted three copies, one of which was housed in Germany and was destroyed in a World War II bomb raid. The other two survive, one in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the other in the Minnesota Marine Art Museum. The oil on canvas paintings, which measure twenty one feet and three inches by fourteen feet and five inches, captured imaginations ever since they were unveiled.
