Images(4)

The Attainder of Strafford

Artist Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze American, born Germany (Württemberg), 1816–1868

Date1849

MediumEmanuel Gottlieb Leutze, American, born Germany (Württemberg), 1816–1868

Dimensions48 1/4 x 42 1/4 in. (122.6 x 107.3 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Art Trust Fund Endowment and the bequest of Carlyle Adams, and partial gift of Prof. William H. Gerdts and Abigail Booth Gerdts

Object number2017.12

On View

Not on view

Provenance**Commissioned by the American Art-Union, New York, 1849; created New York, 1849; distributed as no. 322 to Daniel Stanbury Mercein (1811–1869), Vicksburg, MS, later Hazle, PA, 1849; [Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, April 25, 1968, no. 231, illus.] [1]; sold to Alfred Ehrlich; [Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, June 19, 1981, no. 26, illus. (bought-in)], [Sotheby’s, New York, October 31, 1985, no. 223, illus. (b-w)]; Dr. & Mrs. William H. Gerdts, New York; given/sold to NCMA, 2017 [2].

[1] As Charles II (sic) Signs the Order for the Beheading of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford.
[2] Partial purchase and partial gift of Dr. and Mrs. Gerdts.

Published ReferencesExhibition notice, Kölnische Zeitung (Cologne, Germany), August 18, 1849.

Evening Mirror (New York), September 21, 1849.

The Albion (New York), September 22, 1849.

“Fine Art Gossip,” Bulletin of the American Art-Union, vol. 2, no. 7 (October 1849), 25. Also listed in “Catalogue of Works of Art,” 46, no. 322 (as The Attainder of Strafford).

“American Art Union advertisement,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn, NY), October 17, 1849, 2 (reprinted in subsequent issues).

“The Gallery.—No. 5,” Bulletin of the American Art-Union, vol. 2, no. 8 (November 1849), 5, 15–16, illus. (etching by Charles Burt) 4.

Bulletin of the American Art-Union, vol. 2, no. 9 (December 1849), 44, listed in “Catalogue of Works of Art,” no. 322 (as The Attainder of Strafford).

“American Art-Union,” Evening Post (New York), December 15, 1849, 2.

“Proceedings at the Annual Meeting, 1849” Transactions of the American Art-Union, for the Year 1849 (New York: George F. Nesbitt, 1850), 54, no. 322.

Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA), January 9, 1850, 2 [notice of Mercein’s “prize”].

Vicksburg Whig (Vicksburg, MS), January 9, 1850, 1 [notice Mercein’s “prize”].

Ornaments of Memory; or, Beauties of History, Romance, and Poetry (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1854), illus. (etching by Charles Burt) opp. 83.

Rudolf Wiegmann, Die Königliche Kunst-Akademie zu Düsseldorf. Ihre Geschichte, Einrichtung und Wirksamkeit und die Düsseldorfer Künstler (Düsseldorf, 1856), listed 247 (as Karl I., das Todesurtheil des Grafen Strafford unterzeichnend [Charles I Signing the Death Warrant of the Earl of Strafford].

Henry T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists, 2nd ed. (1867; reprinted New York, James F. Carr, 1966), noted 335.

Moritz Blanckarts, Düsseldorfer Künstler: Nekrologe aus den letzten zehn Jahren (Stuttgart, Ebner & Suebert, 1877), listed 22.

Friedrich von Boetticher, Malerwerke des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Vol.1 (Dresden, 1893), listed 847 (Leutze, no. 18 as Karl I. unterzeichnet das Todesurteil des Grafen Strafford).

American Academy of Fine Arts and American Art-Union: Exhibition Record, 1816–1852 (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1953), 231.

Raymond L. Stehle, The Life and Works of Emanuel Leutze (Typescript, 1972); included in “Annotated List of the Works of Emanuel Leutze”, 1 (as Attainder of Strafford by Charles I).

Barbara S. Groseclose, Emanuel Leutze, 1816–1868: Freedom is the Only King (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1975): no. 46 (as Charles I Signs the Order for the Beheading of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford).

William H. Gerdts, “On Elevated Heights: American Historical Painting and Its Critics,” in Gerdts and Mark Thistlethwaite, Grand Illusions: History Painting in America (Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum, 1988), 67, 91, illus. (b-w) fig. 44.

Wendy Greenhouse, The American Portrayal of Tudor and Stuart History, 1835–1865 (Ph.D. Diss., Yale University, 1989), 257, 260–63, 298, 420–21, illus. figs. 95, 96.

Jochen Wierich, Grand Themes: Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware, and American History Painting (University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), noted 53.

Reproduction: Charles Burt (1823–1892), The Attainder of Strafford, after Leutze, 1849, engraving, published in the Bulletin of the American Art-Union, vol. 2, no. 8 (Nov. 1849), 4. Reprinted in Ornaments of Memory; or, Beauties of History, Romance, and Poetry (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1854), opp. 83.
Exhibition HistoryDüsseldorf, Prussia, exhibition, August 1849 (per Stehle).

New York, NY, The Century Association, “Exhibition of Work by Emanuel Leutze, 1946, no. 41.

New York, NY, National Academy of Design, “Emanuel Leutze and American Artists in Germany,” May 29–July 4, 1999.
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