I haven't seen an art history thread here in a while, if not ever. I must admit that I'm almost entirely unfamiliar with art history, I'm just a pure historian by trade. As someone working to get into the museum field, I'm at a severe disadvantage to artfags, as there are plenty more art museums than there are history museums. Therefore, I'm looking for more info on art history to try and get myself a leg up on my competition.
Anyways, I figured this thread would be a good place to share your favorite historic pieces of art/artists and any recommendable sources you might have for educating yourself on art history, either online or in book form.
I'll start it off with what little I know on this piece, Emanuel Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware." This iconic piece of American art was actually not made by a native born American, as Leutze was born in Germany, and whose family soon emigrated to America. The painting itself was actually painted in Germany, as Leutze moved back to his native country to study art, and wanted to paint this to inspire the Europeans involved in the Revolutions of 1848.
There are actually two versions of this painting, the original was destroyed during WWII in a RAF bombing raid on Bremen, Germany in 1942. The second version survives today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, which was also temporarily damaged by a museum guard in 2002, who glued a picture of the September 11th attacks to the painting.
From a historical standpoint, this painting is highly inaccurate. The American flag in the picture was not flown until about a year after Washington's crossing the Delaware River, and the historic crossing itself took place in the dead of night in the rain, the light in the painting was added by the artist for the sake of aesthetics. Even the ice was inaccurate, as the river was modeled on the Rhine, where ice forms in chunks rather than sheets as on the Delaware River, which is also much narrower than as depicted.