Bird Nesting

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

1837

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

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Topic: Landscape\tree; Animal\bird; Figure male\child; Recreation\sport and play\climbing; Object\other\nest

GUID (Link to Original Record): http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/vk7e9601ec1-2552-4847-92b4-93c84437009a