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Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (mural study, U.S. Capitol)
1861
Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze
Born: Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany 1816
Died: Washington, District of Columbia 1868
oil on canvas
33 1/4 x 43 3/8 in. (84.5 x 110.1 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Bequest of Sara Carr Upton
1931.6.1
Smithsonian American Art Museum
2nd Floor, East Wing
Leutze's mural study for the Capitol in Washington celebrated the idea of Manifest Destiny just when the Civil War threatened the republic. The surging crowd of figures records the births, deaths, and battles fought as European Americans settled the continent to the edge of the Pacific. Like Moses and the Israelites who appear in the ornate borders of the painting, these pioneers stand at the threshold of the Promised Land, ready to fulfill what many nineteenth-century Americans believed was God's plan for the nation.
Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006
Read research notes for Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (mural study, U.S. Capitol). (pdf)
Keywords
Allegory - other - civilization
Ethnic - Indian
Figure(s) in exterior - frontier
History - United States - westward expansion
Study - mural study
Travel - land - stagecoach
painting
paint - oil
fabric - canvas
About Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze
Born: Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany 1816 Died: Washington, District of Columbia 1868
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